Page images
PDF
EPUB

love and cherish. He loves her not for these things, but in spite of them.

So I love the Constitution; not in consequence of these things which are alleged to be in it, but in spite of them. But you will say, the woman had a right to sport an excrescence on her hand if she chose. I concede it; and as a Federal law-maker I concede that the States have a right to sport this fungus of slavery, because it is beyond my reach. But time rolls away. This youthful pair have years of middle age upon them. Ölive plants have sprung up around the parent stem. The woman has gone mad. She gloats over the excrescence which has spread and covers her entire hand. She exclaims, "Husband, this is a dear, sweet darling, a real love of a wart, and I want to engraft it on the hands of all our daughters. I had it when I was married; you vowed to protect me, and I claim the right to transfer it to all the children. If you do not, I will go to Indiana and get a divorce. I will dissolve the union between us." The husband, calm and firm, replies, "My dear, I have indulged you in this whim about your hand, because I took you for better or for worse, and I thought it one of your individual rights which I was not at liberty to disturb. But if you propose to transfer this deformity to the daughters, I say distinctly and decidedly it cannot be done. This is my prerogative and I must exercise it." So I say to slavery propagandists who desire to transplant slavery to the Territories, and thus fasten it to the daughters of the Republic, "My dears, it cannot be done."-Hon. Owen Lovejoy, 1860.

THE HELPER BOOK.

MR. CHAIRMAN, my time is passing away, and I must haste on. I want to come to a few things that have been under discussion during the inchoate condition of the House, whilst this hall was echoing with ululations that would have drowned the lupine chorus of the Alps, of Helper, and John Brown, and incendiarism, the torch of the incendiary and the knife of the assassin. One gentleman from Virginia stood up in his place, and wanted to know where there was a man that would endorse the Helper book. He wanted such a man, if there was one here, to stand up, that he might look upon the traitor. Mr. Chairman, I, for one, signed the paper recommending the circulation of the Helper book. I signed it intelligently. I was neither engrossed nor abstracted. I did it

because I wanted to do it; and now, if the gentleman wants to look upon that kind of a traitor, me, me, adsum qui feci, in me convertite telum; I did it. I will sign a recommendation for the circulation of any book I choose, without asking permission of the gentleman from Missouri, (Mr. Clark,) or of any other gentleman in the House or out of the House. I will sign a paper recommending the circulation of the Bible or the Koran, Young's Night Thoughts or Tom Moore's Anacreon, Jonathan Edwards on the Decrees, or Tom Paine's Age of Reason, just as I please.

I claim the privilege, as an American citizen, of writing my name and recommending the circulation of any and every book, without being held amenable to gentlemen upon this floor or anywhere else. That is my answer in regard to i I have no more than that to say. I say nothing about some points in the book. I have no doubt that there is considerable bombast and fustian and violence of language in it, because the author was educated in a slave State; and the rhetoric which comes from that quarter is apt to have these characteristics. But the philosophy-the gist of the bookis what? It is the address of a citizen of a slave State to his fellow-citizens in regard to the subject of slavery, recommending in substance the organization of a Republican party in North Carolina and in all the other slave States. I hope to see that done; and I expect to see it done before very long. You may kill Cassius M. Clay, as you threaten to do; but "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." You may shed his blood, as you shed the blood of my brother on the banks of the Mississippi twenty years ago-and what then? I am here to-day, thank God, to vindicate the principles baptized in his blood. You may shed his blood-and what then? A Republican party will spring up in Kentucky and in all the slave States ere long; and these disunionists and gentlemen whom you see so violent now, will be displaced by more moderate and-if I may say so without being offensive more sensible men.

I believe in that doctrine. I do not indorse every expression in the Helper book, for I have not studied every expression; but the philosophy of the book, the idea of organizing a party in the slave States as against slavery, I am in favor of, and I expect to see it accomplished. What is the objection to the book? The objection is that a citizen of the United States, an American citizen, addressed himself to his fellowcitizens, in a peaceful way, through the press, and for this you find fault with him, and say that he must be hanged, and that any man who signed a recommendation for the circulation

of his book is a "blighting, blasting, burning, withering curse," and must not occupy that chair.

Hon. Owen Lovejoy, 1860.

SLAVERY MUST DIE.

I TELL you of the slave States that you must emancipate your slaves. It belongs to you and not to us. You must transform them from slaves into serfs, and give them homes, and protect and guard the sanctity of the family. We shall not push you. If you say that you want a quarter of century, you can have it; if you want half a century, you can have it. But I insist that this system must ultimately be extinguished. You who advocate the perpetuity of slavery are like a set of madcaps who should place themselves on the top of an iceberg which had disengaged itself from the frozen regions of the north, and begun to float downward and downward, through the warm climates. The sun shines and melts it; the soft winds blow on and melt it; the rains descend and melt it; the water ripples round it and melts it; and then these wild visionaries who fancied they could sail an iceberg through the tropics, start up and blaspheme sunshine and rain and zephyr; and, mouthing the heavens, tell Jehovah that unless he stops the shining of the sun, and the blowing of the winds, and the falling of the rain, they will crumble his universe "from turret to foundation stone."

Do you not think God would feel bad; and would not the archangels tremble at the chivalry? You may call this extravagant; but you can no more perpetuate slavery, and will no more dissolve this Union, in order to perpetuate it, than you can stop the shining of the sun, or the ripple of the sea, the descent of rain, or the blowing of the wind; ay, no more than you can subdue the ocean when it lashes itself into fury and dashes its crested mountain billows against the rocks. It is as preposterous to think of taking slavery down through the civilization of the ages as it is to think of floating an iceberg through the tropics. It is the order of things. I am willing to concede that you can do anything that any equal number of men can achieve. I did mean to taunt you about Harper's Ferry, but I believe I will not. I am willing to concede that you are as brave as other men; although I do

The speech was made during a violent contest for the Speakership of the House of Representatives.

not think you show it by this abusive language; because brave men are always calm and self-possessed. God feels no anger, for he knows no fear.

I say you can do anything that other men can do. You can preserve and perpetuate this system, if any equal number of men could do it; but the stars in their courses are fighting against you; God, in his providence, is fighting against you. The universe was established upon the great principle of justice and truth; it may be jostled out of its place for a little while, but it will, sooner or later, fall back to its grooves. You must sacrifice slavery for the good of your country. Do this, and you will have the sympathy, the prayers, and the cooperation of the entire nation.

Refuse or neglect this-refuse to proclaim liberty through all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof-and the exodus of the slaves will be through the Red Sea. It is a well-known physiological, as well as psychological fact, that ancestral characteristics reappear after a long interval of years, and even of generations, as streams disappear and gush out at a distant point. It is also well known that the Saxon blood is being infiltrated into the veins of the enslaved. By and by some Marion will be found, calling his guerilla troops from the swamps and everglades of South Carolina; and Patrick Henry will reappear in the Old Dominion, shouting, as of old, "Give us liberty, or give us death!" Then will transpire those scenes which troubled the prophetic vision of Jefferson, and made him tremble for his country, when he remembered that God was just, and that his justice would not sleep forever, and that every divine attribute would be arrayed upon the side of the struggling bondmen. And he justified the uprising by saying, the little finger of American slavery was thicker than the loins of British despotism.

Sir, Virginia cannot afford, the country cannot afford, to continue a practice fraught with so much of peril. It is better to remove the magazine than to be kept evermore in dread of a lighted match. The future glory and usefulness of this nation cannot be sacrificed to this system of crime. The nations of the earth are to be taught by our example. The American Republic must repose queen among the nations of the earth. Slavery must die. Delenda est Carthago. Hon. Owen Lovejoy, 1860.

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF WM. LLOYD GARRISON.

It was about the year 1816, that a young man, born in the town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, educated in our northern schools, began to teach the doctrine of ultimate emancipation, through colonization, to the citizens of Boston. The doors of the most magnificent churches in that city flew open, as upon oiled hinges, at his approach. His eloquence was the theme of every tongue, and his praise sounded throughout the land. He was called upon to aid in an attempt by Benjamin Lundy to establish a paper called the "Genius of Emancipation," in Baltimore. He went there as an assistant editor of that paper, at the solicitation of the south. He there became acquainted with the atrocity of the inter-state slave trade. He there saw the workings of slavery for himself. He there saw that this scheme of colonization was Janus-faced; that at the South it meant new and increased guarantees for the perpetuation of slavery, while at the North it was held out to the rich and philanthropic as a means for the ultimate extinction of slavery. I say he ob served this inter-state slave trade-a trade which was not stigmatized as piracy by law, but which was marked with every atrocious feature that ever distinguished the foreign traffic. More than that, it tears asunder those who have in some degree acquired the principles of civilization, and have been by it taught to feel more keenly the pangs of forced dissolution of family and social ties.

Not long after this, a ship owned by a northern merchant, commanded by a northern captain, and manned by northern seamen, was chartered, and shipped a cargo of human beings at Baltimore for the New Orleans market. This man saw the slaves embarked. He had been invited south to edit a colonization paper, and seeing these things himself, he spoke of them as they deserved in his He seized the opporpaper. tunity of commencing the attack upon a vessel fitted out in his own birth-place, which had engaged in a traffic so harrowing to his feelings and sensibilities. He printed an article in his paper, describing the conduct of these northern men in bringing vessels to southern ports to engage in this abominable traffic, by which they could grow rich, while their conscientious neighbors, who desired to engage only in the legitimate coast-wise trade, could not make a living. And what was the result? Why, sir, although the article was aimed at individuals in the North alone, it did in fact strike

« PreviousContinue »