SLAVE STATES CLAIMED BY THE REBEL PRESIDENT. 55

Congress. And finally, in full accordance with these significant facts, the State papers and military orders issued from Richmond, together with the whole Southern press, have always regarded every slave State as making a part of the Southern Confederacy.

ALL SLAVE STATES OFFICIALLY CLAIMED BY THE REBEL

PRESIDENT.

Mr. Davis, the rebel President, gives, among other official proofs, incidental evidence of the position here taken, in his specification of Kentucky, when addressing Vice-President Stephens, in July, 1863, relating to his projected visit to Washington on the "Confederate steamer Torpedo." Mr. Davis says:

The putting to death of unarmed prisoners has been a just ground of complaint in more than one instance; and the recent executions of our officers in Kentucky, for the sole cause that they were engaged in recruiting service in a State which is claimed as still one of the United States, but is also claimed by us as one of the Confederate States, must be repressed by retaliation if not unconditionally abandoned, because it would justify the like execution in every other State of the Confederacy.

This refers to the spies executed by order of General Burnside in Kentucky; although that State, in every popular election, in some half dozen instances since the rebellion began, has given overwhelming majorities for the Union as against secession.

Now, do these uniform, consistent, public, official acts (though of course without just authority), admit of any other explanation than that secession was undertaken, and that the rebellion has been prosecuted through every step in its progress, in entire subserviency to slavery? Their pretended rule was only claimed to extend over the slave States, but yet over all of them. All their acts were marked by a geographical line, and that line bounding freedom

and slavery. Their independence, from first to last, they have insisted, must be acknowledged by granting to them every slave State, and their President, members of Congress, and public journals, have constantly declared that they will never consent to peace on any other terms.*

It would seem that no proposition was ever more fully sustained by testimony of every species, both positive and negative, than that this rebellion has its life-spring in slavery. To preserve, perpetuate, and extend it, has animated its civic councils, furnished the theme for the eloquence of its pulpits, given prowess to its military leaders, sustained the heroic endurance of its soldiery, and nerved to the sacrifices and stimulated the prayers of its people. We know not what more could be possibly added to make out a plainer case.

In regard to the first six reasons presented by Judge Robertson to show that protection to slavery could not have stimulated "the leading conspirators," and in which he says "they knew" this and "they knew" that, we need only reply that sane men might have seen and known all he states, of the then past, present, and future. But the difficulty with those "leading conspirators" was that they were not sane. They were demented. The profits, the glory, and the divinity of slavery had intoxicated them to frenzy. They could see nothing as it was. Our belief is that God had smitten them with judicial blindness; and that, through their infatuation, He intended to accomplish for this nation great purposes of His own-of which we shall speak hereafter. But be this as it may, no truth in the world is better sustained than this, that slavery, as

Among the "terms" of peace, on which alone the Richmond Enquirer says the rebels are willing to negotiate, this is stated: "2. Withdrawal of the Yankee forces from every foot of Confederate ground, including Kentucky and Missouri." "The North must yield all; we nothing." These "terms," in which they claim all the Slave States, are given in full, in a note to Chapter iv.

UNLIMITED EXTENSION OF SLAVERY.

57

explained, is the cause of the rebellion against the Government of the United States.

UNLIMITED EXTENSION OF SLAVERY.

But it was not only to preserve slavery where it was established that the rebellion was undertaken. Nor was it, in addition, merely to carry it into the unoccupied domain of the United States. Their scheme was much more grand than this. They aimed to build up a great Slave Empire around the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico and the States of Central America, now free, were to be peopled with negro slaves; and the isles of the sea, now consecrated to freedom, were to be re-enslaved; and with Cuba, these fertile lands of the tropics, united to the Southern States, were to constitute the territory of a nation whose "cornerstone" was to be human bondage.

The proof that this was the magnificent plan contemplated, is overwhelming. General Gantt refers to this in his speeches, from which we have quoted. It was for this he himself fought in the rebel army. He says: "I was a very good type of a pro-slavery man. I said, if the Constitution of our fathers would not protect slavery, no guarantees would do it. I wanted to give that power an expansion, westward to the ocean, and in another direction to take in Cuba and a part of Mexico, and all we could get beyond."

Any one who doubts that it was the scheme of the leaders of the rebellion to extend slavery south and west over countries now free, "to go and root itself," in the language of Dr. Palmer, "wherever Providence and nature might carry it," and "with the freest scope for its natural development and extension," has not had his eyes open to current and notorious events.

But this is by no means all. To make this "extension"

of slavery over so vast a region either practicable or profitable, another thing was absolutely essential. Where were the slaves to come from to occupy these immense domains of the tropics? or even profitably to develop our own unoccupied Territories, could slaves have been brought into them, or could the South have obtained the portion claimed by her on "an equitable division" of the Union? The answer to this is easy; but it is not found where certain "conservatives," so called, at the North find it.

It is one of the curious things which the discussions of the times have developed, that certain Northern men charge those who would hinder the "extension" of slavery into our own free territory, with throwing obstacles in the way of emancipation; declaring that the way to perpetuate slavery is to confine it where it is, whereas, to allow it to expand, according to the wishes of its friends, is the certain way to promote emancipation and eventually to destroy it.

THE RESTRICTIVE POLICY.

Among those who have taken this view is Rev. Dr. Samuel J. Baird, of New Jersey. In his letter before referred to, entitled "Southern Rights and Northern Duties in the present Crisis," he says upon the point in hand: "The distraction now realized by our country, has attained its portentous character in consequence of two assumptions which are both demonstrably false." Our present concern is with only one of these "assumptions," which he states thus: "It is assumed that the effect of the erection of new Slave States, is to increase the amount of slavery in the country." He then proceeds "to state the grounds upon which" he has "long held the opinion, that the restrictive, or free soil policy, so far from tending to the advantage of the negro, and the extirpation of slavery,

THE RESTRICTIVE POLICY.

59

has directly the opposite effect, that its influence is to retard his elevation, and render early emancipation impossible."

Dr. Baird here takes precisely the opposite view of the "restrictive" policy from that taken by both Drs. Palmer and Thornwell. The former, in his Thanksgiving Discourse, before quoted, says: "The decree has gone forth that the institution of Southern slavery shall be constrained within assigned limits. Though nature and Providence should send forth its branches like the banyan-tree, to take root in congenial soil, here is a power superior to both, that says it shall wither and die within its own charmed circle." Dr. Thornwell, in his article before referred to, says: "The extension of slavery, in obedience to Northern prejudice, is to be forever arrested. Congress is to treat it as an evil, an element of political weakness, and to restrain its influence within the limits which now circumscribe it." "You may destroy the oak as effectually by girdling it as by cutting it down. The North are well assured that if they can circumscribe the area of slavery, if they can surround it with a circle of non-slaveholding States, and prevent it from expanding, nothing more is required to secure its ultimate abolition. Like the scorpion girt by fire,' it will plunge its fangs into its own body and perish."

There seems to be, then, a slight difference of opinion between the New Jersey Doctor and the High Priests of the Slavery Propaganda, as to the effect of the "restrictive" policy. He thinks, and has "long held the opinion," that the restriction of slavery "would render early emancipation impossible;" they, that "nothing more is required to secure its ultimate abolition." We judge that the Southern Doctors had the more ample knowledge and sounder view of the case. Dr. Baird reasons theoretically, while the other gentlemen reason practically.