in danger; fearless and foremost in every use This state of things naturally leads thought ful enterprise; unexceptionable in morals; ful minds to reflect on the actual condition of with an intellect elevated by nature, and cul- this Union, of Slave States politically united tivated in laborious fields of duty, I trust with Free States. Those living under the he is destined to save this Union from disso- former are in a perpetual consciousness of lution; to restore the Constitution to its danger. It cannot be otherwise, however they original purity; and to relieve that instrument, may attempt to conceal it from others which Washington designed for the preserva- and from themselves. It is impossible that tion and enlargement of freedom, from being three hundred thousand whites, who are the any longer perverted to the multiplication of Slave States and the extension of slavery. JOSIAH QUINCY. QUINCY, July, 1856. masters, surrounded by three million of blacks, who are slaves, can live otherwise than under a never-ceasing sense of danger. The mode of maintaining the subjection of their slaves is, therefore, the constant object of their thoughts. In the Free States, on the contrary, from twenty to twenty-five millions of whites exist, with proportionate superiority in wealth, activity, and physical power, without any care of or danger from slaves. This difference of condition in the two In early life, from 1805 to 1813, I served as Representative in the Congress of the United States from the town of Boston. I was an active member of the Federal party formed by Washington, and have never belonged to any other. Though sympathizing in feeling with Free Soilers and Abolitionists, I have never concurred in the measures of either. My heart has always been more affected by the species of States produces unavoidably, in slavery to which the Free States have been slaveholders, a continual sense of danger from subjected, than with that of the negro. Placed within, and of prospective danger from withsuccessively, since 1820, in the offices of Judge of the Municipal Court, of Mayor of Boston, and of President of Harvard College, I have abstained from all connection with politics for thirty-four years, except by voting; and now I come, at your request, to offer views and opinions on the present crisis of public affairs, derived from the light of history, and from the counsels and advice of Washington. The blow on the head of Sumner was not intended for him alone. It was struck at Liberty herself, in one of her most sacred temples. It was a public notice and declaration to every man in the Free States, that liberty of speech no longer existed in Congress for him or for his Representative; that whoever coming from the Free States dare to utter a word in opposition to the views, or in derogation of the power of slaveholders, will speak at the peril of life. There is nothing new in this system of intimidation. Fifty years ago it was an approved practice of slaveholders. In that day, men from the Free States, who were open o ponents to the administration, often carried pistols in self-defence. Others, urged by their friends to do it, declined; being unwilling, under any circumstances, to have the life of a fellow-being on their consciences. The only difference between our times and the past is this; heretofore they brandished the bludgeon; now they have brought it down. Formerly the bowie-knife was only seen in its sheath, or half-drawn by way of terror; now it is seen glistening in their hands, or steeped in the blood of freemen in Kansas. out. The immense superiority of physical power in the Free States, combined with a knowledge of their own inherent weakness, creates in their minds a belief that their own political existence, and that of their slaves, depend upon obtaining and keeping the control of the Free States. Nature, in the human as in every other animal, compensates positive or comparative weakness by some quality which is equivalent for defence. In the case of the Slave States, she supplies the want of strength by art. The operation of this, in effecting their great object of obtaining and keeping the control of the Free States, it is my purpose briefly to illustrate from the history of this Union. The art by which, for more than fifty years, the Slave States have subjugated the Free States, and vested in their own hands all the powers of the Union, they call policy. Its proper name is cunning; that "left-handed wisdom," as Lord Bacon calls it, which the Devil and conquer." By this, they established the practised in the garden of Eden, seat of national government in a slave country, and thus surrounded Congress with an atmosphere of slavery, and subjected the Free States to its influences, in the place where the councils of the nation are held, and where the "divide whole public_sentiment is hostile to the principles of the Free States; and where, in case of collisions resulting in actions at law and indictments, slaveholders are judges, jurors, and executioners. This location of the seat of gov 66 ernment has been one of the most potent tute of all desire to establish the supremacy of causes of that dominion over the nation which slaveholders. They spoke of slavery, like they have acquired. Patrick Henry, as a curse," which blighted Again: by cunning, they inserted Louisiana the prospects and weakened the strength of into the Union, not only without the concur- the Slave States, with him deplored the rence of the Free States, but without so much necessity of holding men in bondage, declaring as asking it, - a measure which has been the their belief that the time would come when Pandora's box of all our evils. an opportunity will be afforded to abolish this lamentable evil; "like Governor Randolph, they regarded themselves "oppressed by slavery, and treated with disdain the idea that the Slave States could stand by themselves; "* with Judge Tucker, of Virginia,t they thought, as he declared, that posterity "would execrate the memory of those ancestors, who, having the power to avert the evil of slav ery, have, like their first parents, entailed a curse on all future generations." Another of their arts is arrogance, or an insolent assumption of superiority. This, though a result of their condition as masters of slaves, is of great power. "Like boldness, it is the child of ignorance and vanity; yet it fascinates, and binds, hand and foot, those that are shallow in judgment or weak in courage, and prevaileth even with wise men at weak times. It hath done wonders in popular States." In Slave States, slaveholders are sovereigns, and deem themselves entitled to govern everywhere. In them, with few inconsiderable exceptions, they are proprietors of all the lands; which few persons can afford to hold, except owners of slaves. As the rate of wages is regulated by the expense of supporting slaves, it is, of course, the least possible. Of consequence, slaves are the successful rivals of the white poor; being more obedient, and the expense of supporting them being less. Thus the white poor, in the Slave States, are reduced to a state of extreme degradation; in some respects, lower than the negro. They cannot dig; for field-labor to a white person is there a disgrace. To beg, they are ashamed; and they have no master to whom they can look for support. Having no land, they have no political power: the value of their labor is below that of the slave; and their actual condition comparatively that of extreme wretchedness. One-half of the white population of the Slave States are said to be in that condition. In the vocabulary of slaveholders, liberty means only that planters should be independent, and have no superiors. Fifty years ago, there were two classes of slaveholders in Congress; the one, generous in spirit, polished in manners, true to the principles of liberty and the Constitution, uniting heart and hand with the Representatives from the Free States in objects and policy; of the same type and character as George Washington, John Marshall, William Pinckney, Henry W. Dessaussure, John Stanley, Nicholas Vandyke, Philip Stuart, Alexander Contee Hanson, and a host of others, too numerous to be recapitulated, in principle and views coincident with the Constitution, desti*Lord Bacon's Essay on Boldness. These men, far from threatening to go out of the Union, regarded and spoke of it as a main hope of dependence against their own slaves. They encouraged and supported every man from the Free States who met the violence of the insolent class with appropriate spirit. They saw and lamented the character and conduct of the lower and baser slaveholders, who, coarse in language, overbearing in manner, caring nothing for the principles of liberty and the Constitution, came to Congress for the purpose of getting office or place, and, to that end, were as subservient to every nod of the administration as any slave to that of his master. The nobler class of slaveholders foresaw and foretold that the effect of the language and course of conduct of this violent class would gradually wear away the affections of the Free States, and lead to a dissolution of the Union. These higher spirits could not submit to use the arts and language to obtain power to which the baser sort condescended, and, of consequence, lost their influence in their respective districts; to which these political filibusters succeeded, and came to Washington, some to follow and some to direct the course of the administration, by whom they were rewarded according to their talents, their violence, or their subserviency. In 1810, John Randolph, in whose mind Virginia included all the South, said to me, "Virginia is no longer what it once was. The spirit of the old planters is departed or gradually wearing away: we are overrun by time-servers, office-hunters, and political blacklegs." In a letter to me, dated "Richmond, * See Debates in the Convention of Virginia. 22d March, 1814," after giving a melancholy description of a visit he had just made to "the seat of his ancestors, in the maternal line, at the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers," he adds, "The curse of slavery, however, an evil daily magnifying, great as it already is, embitters many a moment of the Virginian landholder, who is not duller than the clod under his feet." Slaveholders have been for fifty years, a few only excepted, the political masters of these States. Rampant with long-possessed authority, in the natural spirit of the class, they have now put on the lash, and are getting ready for use their fetters and manacles. the present actual condition of the Constitution, as it is called, of the United States. The admission of Louisiana into the Union, without asking or having the consent of the people of the States or of the States themselves, was undeniably a stupendous usurpation. The passage of the Louisiana Admission Bill was effected by the arts which slaveholders well know how to select and apply. Sops were given to the Congressional watch-dogs of the Free States. To some, promises were made, by way of opiates; and those whom they could neither pay nor drug were publicly treated with insolence and scorn. Threats, duels, and violence were at that day, as now, Let the Free States understand that the modes approved by them to deter men from crisis has come. Their own fate and that of awakening the Free States to a sense of their their posterity depend upon the fact, whether, danger. From the moment that act was passed, in this crisis, they are true or false to them- they saw that the Free States were shorn of selves. The extension of slavery has been, their strength; that they had obtained space from the days of Jefferson, the undeviating to multiply Slave States at their will; and pursuit of the slaveholders. Hitherto by cun- Mr. Jefferson had confidentially told them, ning, intrigue, and corruption, and now to that, from that moment, the "Constitution of plant it forever among the South-western the United States was blank paper;" but more States, compromises have been violated, the correctly, there was 66 no longer any Constituballot-boxes broken, the votes of freemen de- tion." stroyed, and free citizens massacred and their The slaveholders from that day saw they houses plundered by mobs, encouraged by a had the Free States in their power; that they slaveholder's administration, and supported by were masters, and the Free States slaves; and the military arm of the United States. If this have acted accordingly. From the passage of tissue of events do not rouse the Free States the Louisiana Bill until this day, their policy. to united and concentrated action, nothing has been directed to a single object, with alwill. Their destinies are fixed. They are most uninterrupted success. That object was doomed slaves. Their liberties are gone. to exclude the Free States from any share of Their Constitution gone. Nothing is left for power, except in subserviency to their views; them but to yoke in with the negro, and take and they have undeniably, during all the subthe lash, submissively, at the caprice of their sequent period of our history (the administration of John Quincy Adams only excepted,) placed in the chair of state either slaveholders, or men from the Free States, who, for the sake of power, consented to be their tools,"Northern men with Southern principles; " in other words, men who, for the sake of power or pay, were willing to do any work they would set them upon. masters. But everybody asks, "What is to be done to throw off this slaveholders' yoke? The first step is to have a spirit and will to be free. If there is a will, the spirit of freemen will soon find a way. It is not the slaveholders' strength, but your folly. It is because they wake, and you sleep; because they unite, and you divide; because they hold in their hands the means of corruption, and half of you perhaps are willing to be corrupted. This is bold language, it will be said. Boldness is one of the privileges of old age. When can a man have a right to be bold, if it be not when he is conscious of being prompted by truth and duty alone, and when a long life is behind him, and nothing before him but a daily-expected summons to the highest and most solemn of all tribunals? I now proceed to trace the political power of these slaveholders from its origin, and show In the times of non-intercourse and embargo, I had frequent intercourse with John Randolph, and for many years a correspondence with him. During the extreme pressure of those measures upon the commerce of the Northern States, I said to him, "Mr. Randolph, these measures are absolutely insupportable. You Southern men will, at this rate, put an end to parties in the Northern States, and we shall come down upon the South in one united phalanx." I shall never forget the half-triumph and half-sneer with which he replied, “You are mistaken, sir; you are mistaken, sir. THE SOUTH ARE AS SURE OF YOUR DEMOCRACY AS THEY ARE Or THEIR OWN NEGROES." Let any man examine the history of the United States, from the reign of Thomas Jefferson to that of Franklin Pierce, and he will find, that, when the slaveholders have any particularly odious and obnoxious work to do, they never fail to employ the leaders of the Democracy of the Free States. This fact speaks volumes to the Free States. In all estimates of their future duties, it should never be forgotten, that every act by which their interests have been sacrificed, and the power of slaveholders increased, has been effected by the treachery of members of the Free States. It is manifest to the Free States, that a monstrous usurpation has been effected, and is intended to be enlarged and perpetuated. lar man in his district, were to keep a white servant in his house, his character and reputation would be irretrievably ruined. Mr. Adams said, that this confounding servitude and labor was one of the bad effects of slavery. Mr. Calhoun thought it was attended with many excellent consequences. It did not apply to all sorts of labor,-not, for example, to holding the plough; he and his father had often done that: nor did it apply to manufacturing and mechanical labor; these were not degrading: but to dig, to hoe, to do work either in the field, the house, or the stable, these were menial labors, the proper work of slaves. No white man could descend to that. Calhoun thought that it was the best guaranty of equality among the whites. It produced among them an unvarying level. It did not admit of inequalities a long whites. The warning voice of Washington, in this Mr. Adams replied, that it was all perverted state of things, is, "LET THERE BE NO sentiment, mistaking labor for slavery and CHANGE BY USURPATION." He adds, dominion for freedom. And, in stating it in "CHANGE BY USURPATION IS THE CUSTOM- conversation, Adams remarked, that this disARY WEAPON BY WHICH FREE GOVERN- cussion with Calhoun had betrayed to him the MENTS ARE DESTROYED." Again: Wash- secret of their souls. In the abstract, they ington advises, "RESIST WITH CARE THE admit slavery to be an evil; but, when probed SPIRIT OF INNOVATION UPON THE PRINCI to the quick, they show, at the bottom of their ples of the CONSTITUTION. THE SPIRIT souls, pride and vainglory in their very condiOF ENCROACHMENT TENDS TO CONSOLIDATE tion of masterdom. They fancy themselves THE POWERS OF ALL DEPARTMENTS IN ONE, more generous and noble-hearted than the AND TO THUS CREATE A REAL DESPOTISM." plain freemen that labor for subsistence. They The Free States are then, undeniably, at look down on the simplicity of New-England this day, in that very state of things in which manners, because they have no habits of overthe warning voice of Washington declared bearing like theirs, and cannot treat negroes RESISTANCE TO BE THEIR DUTY." During like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery, more than forty years, the spirit of a contin- that it taints the very sources of moral princiued series of encroachments has established ple. It establishes false estimates of virtue over them the worst of all possible despotisms, and vice; for what can be more false and · that of slaveholders. The manner in which this duty of resistance, so distinctly advised by Washington, is to be performed in the spirit which he advised, and which his life exemplified, is at this time the subject of earnest and solicitous consideration by the people of the Free States. It will be my endeavor to throw some light on their duties, and on the course to be pursued in performing them. 66 heartless than this doctrine, which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity depend on the color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and reduces man, endowed with logical powers, to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the Christian religion; that slaves are happy and contented in their condition; that there are, between master and slave, mutual ties of attachment and affection; that the Many years ago, John Quincy Adams re- virtues of the master are refined and exalted lated a conversation which he once had with by the degradation of the slave; while, at John C. Calhoun on this very subject. Cal- the same time, they vent execrations on the houn said to him, that the broad principles of slave-trade, curse Great Britain for having liberty which Mr. Adams had been advocating, were just and noble; but that in the Southern country, whenever they were mentioned, they were always understood as applying only to white men. Domestic labor was confined to the blacks; and such was the prejudice, that if he, who was the most popu 4 given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes, for the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to people of color. After reading and weighing the opinions of this great and good man, and reflecting on the facts which he states, can any one doubt the incompatibility of the essential character of slaveholders with the government and management of the affairs of freemen? Can they who regard labor as servitude be the fit guardians of the interests of men who regard labor as their honor, and its successful exercise their duty and glory? Mr. Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," graphically exhibits "the unhappy influence on the manners of slaveholders by the existence of slavery. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all educution in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy or self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present; but, in general, it is not sufficient. The parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose rein to his worst passions, and, thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped with odious peculiarities. The man, then, must be a prodigy who can retain his morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances." After such testimony, given by the greatest and most idolized of all slaveholders, as to the qualities which are the necessary results of their education from childhood of his whole class, will the people of the Free States trust them longer with the care of their Union? Is it wonderful, that in every year, from the days of Thomas Jefferson to the present, such men as Brooks, Keitt, and Butler should, in one uninterrupted succession, have appeared on the floor of Congress? Without enumerating other qualities inherent in slaveholders, and incompatible with the liberties of the Free States, I proceed to examine the nature of that power which slaveholders have wielded over this Union for half a century. -- This power of slaveholders has its origin, as has been already intimated, first from a concentration of interests and fears in the body of slaveholders; second, from a total want of concentration of interests among the people of the Free States, combined with an entire want of all apprehensions of danger owing to their unquestionable superiority in physical power. From the identity of the interests and fears of slaveholders results identity in policy of the members of the whole class. Their studies, thoughts, counsels, are absorbed and directed to two objects,how to keep their negroes in subjection; and, as subsidiary to this end, how to keep the control of the Free States. By this control, they present to the fears of their slaves the arm of the Union, ever in readiness to keep them in subjection, and also relieve themselves from the apprehension that that arm might be extended for the relief of their slaves. Extracts from Mr. Quincy's 'Remarks on "The whole letter of Mr. Choate is founded on an assumption which has no basis in truth. A great crisis,' cried Mr. Choate,' exists in the political affairs of our country. There is a new geographical party formed, which must be defeated and dissolved.' "Now in truth the only question at this time in the political field, is between slaveholders and freemen who are not slaveholders. * * * The assertion and doctrine of Mr. Choate is, that inasmuch as slaveholders exist in only one quarter of the Union, the party opposing them and their projects is geographical. How? Do slaveholders include all the inhabitants of the Slave States? Is it not notorious and demonstrable that there are not, substantially, more than one hundred thousand slaveholders in all of them? Is it not undeniable that these owners of slaves form an oligarchy, which not only holds in bondage three millions of negroes, but also oppresses with an iron sceptre three or four millions, at least, of white freemen living within those States? * * * Slaveholders are a class, and not a geographical section. If slaveholders constitute a geographical party, because they only exist in one quarter of the Union, the manufacturers at Lowell, for the same reason, also form a geographical party. Like them slaveholders make, hold and sell articles for enjoyment and livelihood. Lowell they raise the warp, feed the woof and sell cotton cloth, when it is of full length. In Carolina and the other Slave States, they raise, feed and sell black men and women, when they are of full growth and sometimes babies." At "After this, he (Mr. Choate) goes on to describe what a noble ship the Union is, intimates the value of her cargo, declares she is within half a cable's length of a lee shore of rock, and that our first duty is to put her out and crowd her off into the deep open sea.' All this is very graphic and very true. But |