The Exact Limits Of Any Great Movement Will Not Be
Bounded By Its Purpose.
The heated wax which you drop on your
letter spreads itself beyond the necessities of your seal.
That
these negroes would not have come to the Western World without
compulsion, or having come, would not have worked without
compulsion, is, I imagine, acknowledged by all. That they have
multiplied in the Western World and have there become a race
happier, at any rate in all the circumstances of their life, than
their still untamed kinsmen in Africa, must also be acknowledged.
Who, then, can dare to wish that all that has been done by the negro
immigration should have remained undone?
The name of slave is odious to me. If I know myself I would not own
a negro though he could sweat gold on my behoof. I glory in that
bold leap in the dark which England took with regard to her own West
Indian slaves. But I do not see the less clearly the difficulty of
that position in which the Southern States have been placed; and I
will not call them wicked, impious, and abominable, because they now
hold by slavery, as other nations have held by it at some period of
their career. It is their misfortune that they must do so now - now,
when so large a portion of the world has thrown off the system,
spurning as base and profitless all labor that is not free. It is
their misfortune, for henceforth they must stand alone, with small
rank among the nations, whereas their brethren of the North will
still "flame in the forehead of the morning sky."
When the present Constitution of the United States was written - the
merit of which must probably be given mainly to Madison and
Hamilton, Madison finding the French democratic element, and
Hamilton the English conservative element - this question of slavery
was doubtless a great trouble. The word itself is not mentioned in
the Constitution. It speaks not of a slave, but of a "person held
to service or labor." It neither sanctions nor forbids slavery. It
assumes no power in the matter of slavery; and under it, at the
present moment, all Congress voting together, with the full consent
of the legislatures of thirty-three States, could not
constitutionally put down slavery in the remaining thirty-fourth
State. In fact the Constitution ignored the subject.
But, nevertheless, Washington, and Jefferson from whom Madison
received his inspiration, were opposed to slavery. I do not know
that Washington ever took much action in the matter, but his
expressed opinion is on record. But Jefferson did so throughout his
life. Before the Declaration of Independence he endeavored to make
slavery illegal in Virginia. In this he failed, but long afterward,
when the United States was a nation, he succeeded in carrying a law
by which the further importation of slaves into any of the States
was prohibited after a certain year - 1820. When this law was
passed, the framers of it considered that the gradual abolition of
slavery would be secured. Up to that period the negro population in
the States had not been self-maintained. As now in Cuba, the
numbers had been kept up by new importations, and it was calculated
that the race, when not recruited from Africa, would die out. That
this calculation was wrong we now know, and the breeding-grounds of
Virginia have been the result.
At that time there were no cotton fields. Alabama and Mississippi
were outlying territories. Louisiana had been recently purchased,
but was not yet incorporated as a State. Florida still belonged to
Spain, and was all but unpopulated. Of Texas no man had yet heard.
Of the slave States, Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia were
alone wedded to slavery. Then the matter might have been managed.
But under the Constitution as it had been framed, and with the
existing powers of the separate States, there was not even then open
any way by which slavery could be abolished other than by the
separate action of the States; nor has there been any such way
opened since. With slavery these Southern States have grown and
become fertile. The planters have thriven, and the cotton fields
have spread themselves. And then came emancipation in the British
islands. Under such circumstances and with such a lesson, could it
be expected that the Southern States should learn to love abolition?
It is vain to say that slavery has not caused secession, and that
slavery has not caused the war. That, and that only, has been the
real cause of this conflict, though other small collateral issues
may now be put forward to bear the blame. Those other issues have
arisen from this question of slavery, and are incidental to it and a
part of it. Massachusetts, as we all know, is democratic in its
tendencies, but South Carolina is essentially aristocratic. This
difference has come of slavery. A slave country, which has
progressed far in slavery, must be aristocratic in its nature -
aristocratic and patriarchal. A large slaveowner from Georgia may
call himself a democrat, may think that he reveres republican
institutions, and may talk with American horror of the thrones of
Europe; but he must in his heart be an aristocrat. We, in England,
are apt to speak of republican institutions, and of universal
suffrage, which is perhaps the chief of them, as belonging equally
to all the States. In South Carolina there is not and has not been
any such thing. The electors for the President there are chosen not
by the people, but by the legislature; and the votes for the
legislature are limited by a high property qualification. A high
property qualification is required for a member of the House of
Representatives in South Carolina; four hundred freehold acres of
land and ten negroes is one qualification. Five hundred pounds
clear of debt is another qualification; for, where a sum of money is
thus named, it is given in English money.
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