It is true
enough that slavery has been a curse. Whatever may have been its
effect on the negroes, it has been a deadly curse upon the white
masters.
The preaching of abolition during the war is to me either the
deadliest of sins or the vainest of follies. Its only immediate
result possible would be servile insurrection. That is so
manifestly atrocious, a wish for it would be so hellish, that I do
not presume the preachers of abolition to entertain it. But if that
be not meant, it must be intended that an act of emancipation should
be carried throughout the slave States - either in their separation
from the North, or after their subjection and consequent reunion
with the North. As regards the States while in secession, the North
cannot operate upon their slaves any more than England can operate
on the slaves of Cuba. But if a reunion is to be a precursor of
emancipation, surely that reunion should be first effected. A
decision in the Northern and Western mind on such a subject cannot
assist in obtaining that reunion, but must militate against the
practicability of such an object. This is so well understood that
Mr. Lincoln and his government do not dare to call themselves
abolitionists.*
* President Lincoln has proposed a plan for the emancipation of
slaves in the border States, which gives compensation to the owners.
His doing so proves that he regards present emancipation in the Gulf
States as quite out of the question. It also proves that he looks
forward to the recovery of the border States for the North, but that
he does not look forward to the recovery of the Gulf States.
Abolition, in truth, is a political cry. It is the banner of
defiance opposed to secession. As the differences between the North
and South have grown with years, and have swelled to the proportions
of national antipathy, Southern nullification has amplified itself
into secession, and Northern free-soil principles have burst into
this growth of abolition. Men have not calculated the results.
Charming pictures are drawn for you of the negro in a state of
Utopian bliss, owning his own hoe and eating his own hog; in a
paradise, where everything is bought and sold, except his wife, his
little ones, and himself. But the enfranchised negro has always
thrown away his hoe, has eaten any man's hog but his own, and has
too often sold his daughter for a dollar when any such market has
been open to him.
I confess that this cry of abolition has been made peculiarly
displeasing to me by the fact that the Northern abolitionist is by
no means willing to give even to the negro who is already free that
position in the world which alone might tend to raise him in the
scale of human beings - if anything can so raise him and make him fit
for freedom.
