CHARACTER OF FREE NEGROES.

We copy as follows from Results of Emancipation, before alluded to:

"In Lewis' West Indies, written seventeen years before emancipation, it is remarked:-'As to free blacks, they are unfortunately lazy and improvident; most of them half starved, and only anxious to live from hand to mouth. Even those who profess to be tailors, carpenters or coopers, are, for the most part, careless, drunken and dissipated, and never take pains sufficient to attain to any dexterity in their trades. As for a free negro hiring himself out for plantation labor, no instance of such a thing was ever known in Jamaica! Earl GREY said in the House of Lords, June 18, 1852, "That it was established by statistical facts that the negroes were idle, and falling back in civilization;-that relieved from the coercion to which they were freely subjected, and a couple of days labor giving them enough food for a fortnight, the climate rendering clothing and fuel not necessary to life, they had no earthly motive to give a greater amount of service than for mere subsistance."

"In 1850, Mr. JOHN BIGELOW, then one of the editors of the New York Evening Post, paid a visit to Jamaica, and wrote a book thereon. As the testimony of an antislavery man, his statements are given. Mr. BIGELOW says that the land of that island is as prolific as any in the world. It can be bought for $5 to $10 per acre, and five acres confer the right of voting, and eligibility to public offices. Planters offer $1,50 per day for labor; sixteen days labor will enable a man to buy land enough to make him a voter, and the market of Kingston offers a great demand for vegetables at all times. These facts, said Mr. BIGELOW, place indepence within the reach of every black. But what are the results? There has been no increase in voters in twenty years. Lands run wild. Kingston gets its vegetables from the United States!'

MR. BAIRD'S OPINION.

"But we will accumulate proof-pile it up, if necessary. Mr. Robert Baird, who is an enthusiastic advocate of 'the glorious act of British Emancipation,' on visiting the West Indies for his health, could not fail to be struck with the desolate appearance there.

""That the West Indies,' says Mr. Baird, are always grumbling, is an observation often heard, and no doubt it is very true that they are so. But let any one who thinks that the extent and clamor of the complaint exceeds the magnitude of the distress which has called it forth, go to the West Indies and judge for himself. Let him see with his own eyes the neglected and abandoned estates, the uncultivated fields, fast hurrying back into a state of nature, with all the speed of tropical luxuriance—the dismantled and silent machinery, the crumbling walls and deserted mansions, which are familiar sights in most of the British West Indian colonies! Let him then transport himself to the Spanish Islands of Porto Rico and Cuba, and witness the life and activity which prevail in these slave colonies. Let him observe for himself the the activity of the slaves-the improvements daily making in the cultivation of the fields, and in the process carried on at the ingenois, or sugar mills-and the general, indescribable avf thriving and prosperity which surround the wholeand then let him come back to England and say, if he honestly can, that the British West Indian planters and proprietors are grumblers, who complain without adequate cause!

GOV. WOOD'S EXPERIENCE.

"Ex-Gov. Wood, of Ohio, who paid a visit to Jamaica in 1853, and who is no friend to slavery, says:

"Since the blacks have been liberated, they have become indolent, insolent, degraded, and dishonest. They are a rude, beastly set of vagabonds, lying naked about the streets, as filthy as the Hottentots, and I believe worse. On getting to the wharf of Kingston, the first thing the blacks of both sexes, perfectly naked, came swarming about the boat, and would dive for small pieces of coin, that were thrown by the passengers. On entering the city, the stranger is annoyed to death by black beggars, at every step, and you must often show them your pistol, or an uplifted cane, to rid yourself of their importunities." SEWELL'S VIEWS OF KINGSTON—A GOD-FORSAKEN PLACE. }

"Sewell, in his work on the Ordeal of Free Labor, in which he defends emancipation, and pleads for still more extended privileges to the blacks, says of Kingston:

"There is not a house in decent repair; not a wharf in good order; no pavement, no sidewalk, no drainage, and scanty water; no light. There is nothing like work done. Wreck and ruin, devastation and neglect. The inhabitants, taken en masse, are steeped to the eyelids in immorality. The population shows a natural decrease. Illegitimacy exceeds legitimacy. Nothing is replaced that time destroys. If a brick tumbles from a house to the street it remains there. If a spout is loosened by the wind, it hangs by a thread, till it falls. If furniture is accidently broken, the idea of having it mended is not entertained. A God-forsaken place, without life or energy. Old, dilapidated, sickly, filthy, cast away from the anchorage of sound morality, of reason and common sense. Yet this wretched hulk is the Capital of an Island-an Island, the most fertile in the world. It is blessed with a climate the

most glorious; it lies rotting in a shadow of mountains that can be cultivated from summit to base with every product of the tropic and temperate regions. It is the mistress of a harbor wherein a thousand line-of-battle ships can ride safely at anchor.'

THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY ON JAMAICA
MORALITY.

"We might fill a volume with such quotations, showing the steady decline of the Island, but it is well to note the moral condition of the negro. The American Missionary Association, is the strongest kind of Abolition testimony in regard to the moral condition of the negroes. The American Missionary, a monthly paper, and organ of the Association, for July, 1855, has the following quotation from the letters of one of the Missionaries: •

“A man here, may be a drunkard, a liar, a Sabbathbreaker, a profane man, a fornicator, an adulterer, and such like, and be known to be such, and go to chapel, and hold up his head there, and feel no disgrace for these things, because they are so common, as to create a public sentiment in his favor. He may go to the communion table, and cherish a hope of Heaven, and not have his hopes disturbed. [A perfect paradise for BEECHER and GREELEY. I might tell of persons guilty of some, if not of all these things, ministering in holy things.'

"The report of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society of 1853, page 170, says of the nego:

"Their moral condition is very far from being what it ought to be. It is exceedingly dark and distressing,Licentiousness prevails to a most alarming extent among the people. The almost universal prevalence of intemperance is another prolific source of moral darkness and degradation of the people. The masses, among all classes, from the Governor in his palace to the peasant in his hut -from the bishop in his gown to the beggar in his ragsare all slaves to their cups.

slave to a condition of meniality for which there is no abolition. We have shown, from a long array of unimpeachable evidence, that this same system is fast reducing the French and British West Indies from their former proud position of opulance and power, to degradation, misery and want, without regard to caste, condition or color. Have we not then, a right to infer from the analysis of history, and the stern development of physical facts, that any principle or policy which beggars ourselves and destroys the happiness of all alike-master as well as slave-white as well as black-is radically wrong, especially since the devotees of this Utopian philanthropy can point to no living fact within the world's history where the political agitation of the slavery qusstion, has been of the least practical good service? And have we not a right to suppose that the effort to bring all grades of human society to one common level, as common partakers of common rights and privileges-in short, to do by legislation what God Himself has never seen fit to do, is at least one step beyond our prerogatives?

M'KENSIE'S OPINION.

Nor is it our purpose to argue that slavery is right or politic. We have nothing to do with it as an original question. We must treat it as a fact fixed by causes long anterior to our day, and by analogy to consider the consequences of its sudden demolition, by means known to have failed in every instance."

to

"No matter," says McKensie, "how worthy the motive of philanthropists, historical facts stare us in the face, that it is misplaced philanthropy to endeavor elevate the African to an equality with the Caucassian race. Either the inferior becomes more abject and miserable, or both, like mixing tar with water, deterioate, and will finally go into irretrievable decline. An inferior and superir race cannot exist together on terms of equality."

Indeed, this was almost the identical language of President Lincoln to the negro delegation that called upon him in Washington.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.

Are we to read our fate by the light of past history that sheds its hideous glare around us? We are now in the midst of a most gigantic revolution, receiving its main source of nourishment, and basing its excuses for the oblation of blood that now crimsons the soil of half this continent, on the same portentious cloud of agitation, behind which the sun of Roman greatness sat to rise no more-the same species of agitation that for two centuries shook the British Empire from centre to circumferance, and has resulted in a confirmed failure of its objects in her West India possessionsthe same grade of agitation that not only lost to France the "Queen of the Antilles," but has, to all present appearances, blotted out St. Domingoian happiness - the same restless, meddling, fanatical agitation that forced Mexican slaves from one species of servitude into an infinitely more degrading one-an agitation, that no truthful pen of history has shown,

or can show, has ever wrought any permanent, lasting good to either the enslaved or the enslavers-an agitation, marked in every stage of its animus or progress, from Romish agrarianism, and French Jacobism, down to American political Puritanism, by selfishness and ambition, having no parallels, and but few exceptions.

As before stated, we offer no defense of slavery. That is far from our purpose or design. As an original question, it has, in our estimation, absolutely nothing to recommend it, save, perhaps, some passages of Holy Writ, to which we by no means appeal-nor do we fall back on a common, yet ingenious argument, that any species of servitude is slavery-that the weak and ignorant ever were, and ever will be subservient to, and consequently the slaves, in an essential degree, of the wise, the wealthy and powerful. We ask no such aids as these, however well grounded in the logic of philosophy. We freely grant, without equivocation or mental reservation, that to our view, legalized slavery is an evil, and while from our stand point of education, moral and religious training, we revolt when asked to defend the system, as of right, it is our duty, nevertheless, to treat it in all its phases, as a fixed fact, as we would any other great evil which the highest wisdom and holiest purposes of the world have failed to overthrow. We must treat it as a defacto system, having its germ in causes beyond the control of the people of this era. The present generation is not responsible for the existence of slavery. Mr. LINCOLN in his first annual message insists that the North is as much responsible as the South for the existence and continuance of slavery.

None but the merest criminal quack would cut the throat of his patient to cure a tumor on his neck, and the world would decide it criminal mal practice to eviscerate one afflicted with to remeve insipient eresipelas. a cancer in his stomach, or to amputate a limb

Good and wise statesmen from the earliest period of our history saw this tumor, this cancer and this malady on the body politic. They grappled with the disease, and treated the patient according to the best skill and science of the age. They dared not apply the cauterizing lancet, lest its sudden severance from the system, and society to which it had been immemorially attached, should expire under the operation. Among all the illustrious statesmen and philosophers that have adorned the history of our common country, not one has ever been able to draw from the logic of past or present events, or from the theories of the future, a satisfactory solution to this vexed problem. Not one has been able to practically dispose of the question, with safety to the Caucasian and humanity to the African races on this continent.

To suddenly transport four millions of bondsmen from a long, immemorial servitude, under the besetting improvidence, want of care for themselves, ignorance, low vices and indolence, to a condition of freemen, with all the untutored responsibilities of providing against

want, surrounded by the snares of temptation | and vice to which the negro character too freely yields, without those checks of family police regulations that have for centuries restrained an inferior race, would inevitably propogate miseries untold for both classes, that ages could not efface; and, the great question | is, as it ever has been, Which is the greater evil, to suddenly force emancipation, or permit God, in His administration of human affairs to solve a problem that many nations have, for centuries, been in vain endeavoring to determine by edicts, codes and Proclamations, and if it be asked, "Why not try it, as retributive punishment on the 'cause of the war?'" the answer has already been furnished by the tears and blood of nations that have been poisoned by quaffing from the same chalice. We have more to fear from punishing ourselves than others, in this matter.

If history has any significance, can we afford to repeat the experiment? That is a question now before the nation. The people must be responsible for their answer. Our duty ends when we have placed the panorama of veritable history before them.

Gov. DENNISON (Rep.) in his message to the Ohio Legislature, in 1861, says:

"An act of immediate general emancipation, throwing four millions of the colored caste loose on society, North and South, would leave them more enslaved than they are now. Without the intelligence, power, and means of a master of the superior race, to support them in the competition of that race, in the business of life, they would perish. The North rejecting them, as it has done in many states, and might do in others, the four millions let loose in the South, would encounter a war of castes-A WAR OF EXTERMINATION!"

slavery was even the pretext for the present rebellion, may be safely denied, for it cannot be supposed any people would rebel against their own chosen institutions, but that the agitation of the slavery question gave to the pretext for war, its present momentum and its insipient status no one can in truth deny. The argument, based on the assumption that 'slavery is the cause of the war"—that to put a stop to the effect we must remove the cause, is fallacious both in fact and theory. As we proceed, we shall endeavor to show it is not true in fact, and will endeavor here to exhibit the absurdity of the theory.

CAUSE AND EFFECT ILLUSTRATED.

It is asserted, and we believe no one has ever questioned the fact, that religion has been other causes combined since the advent of man on this planet. Shall we argue that therefore religion should be abolished, to prevent the clashing of religious antagonisms? Bread was the "cause" of the great bread riot in London, in the 16th century. Should bread be abolished to remove the "cause" of bread riots? Banks have been the "cause" of numorous bank riots. Will bankers consent to the abolition of that "cause?" The conscription act was the "cause" of the great anti-conscription riot in New York, in 1863. Will the radicals be sufficiently consistent to admit, that to prevent such recurring evils in the future, the conscription act should be abolished?

the cause of more wars and bloodshed than all

These illustrations might be almost indefinitely multiplied, but we have given enough to

CHAPTER III.

HISTORY OF CAUSES OF WAR.

Slavery not the Cause of the War...Illustrations showing the Absurdity of the Claim that it is...Henry Ward Beecher declares the Constitution to be the Cause... Senator Douglas' Testimony...Alex. Stevens' Views... The

Rebel Iverson on the "Cause"...Gov. Rhett on ditto ...The Rebel Benjamin, with Republican aid, creates a "Cause"...The Constitution the "Cause"... Early Times ...The Three Parties in 1786...Alex. Hamilton's "Strong Government"...Early Opposition to the Constitution... Vote close in some of the State Conventions... The Four Rebellions...Shays' Rebellion... South Carolina Rebellion in 1832-The great Abolition Rebellion...The great Southern Rebellion of 1861... What the Cause of the War... Abolition Petitions for Dissolution...A Public Debt a Public Blessing... The object to Destroy the Government ...Know-Nothingism as an Element to Wreck the Government, by placing Power in the hands of its Destroyers...Numerous Extracts in Proof...Treason of the Clergy in 1814...Treason of the Federals in 1814...Support of the Government "Reprobated" by Federal Reprobates, &c,

IS SLAVERY THE CAUSE OF THE WAR?
"Mad, let us grant him then, and now remains
That we find out the cause of this defect;
Or rather say the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause.

[Shakespeare.

So far as this question can be determined, history and facts must sit as umpires. That

"cause," or if it be a cause, the removal of it will not necessarily cure the evil. A cask of powder placed beneath a dweling is perfectly harmless, until some "agitator" applies the torch, that developes its destructive powers, and so it is with the slavery question. So long as agitators permitted it to remain where our but the moment fanatical agitators applied the fathers placed it, all was prosperity and peace, spark, the magazine exploded, and the whole nation is now writhing in the agony developed by the incendiary's torch.

MR. BEECHER HITS THE "CAUSE."

We are more than half inclined to believe that HENRY WARD BEECHER was nearer right than that divine usually is, in political matters, when he declared

*

*

"The truth is that it is the Constitution itself that is the cause of every division. * It has been the fountain and father of all our troubles.” Not that this should be, but that demagogues who have hated our government from the start, have made it so. It is no doubt too true that the constitution has been made the "cause of every division," but had it not been for the slavery agitation, that "cause" could never have developed itself.

The Republican press have been in the habit of quoting the following to show that the South