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of America again bear the tread of a native African bondman. Seven of the states rapidly removed slavery by prospective laws, which, while they deprived no man of what he called his property, but left his slave to be his slave for life, still, in a period of twentyfive years, there remained on the soil of those states not one native born or imported African slave. And whereas, in this state of New York of ours, on the day when it became independent, every seventeenth inhabitant was a slave, in the year 1825, not one slave was found upon its soil. And the redemption came under the invitation of that liberal law, from Germany, France, Holland, England, Scotland and Ireland, and they became naturalized without question as to their former allegiance, or their religious faith, and they are now our brethren, and by ties of kindred are mixed and mingled with the American people. There is scarcely one man or woman who can trace to a parentage of one nation of Europe an undivided lineage. The blood of the Dane and Hungarian-the Irishman and the German-the Frenchman and Englishman -are intermingled until we have become the descendants and representatives of enlightened Christian nations throughout the whole continent of Europe.

And then five new states rose upon that public domain, and all of them free states; and this process still being continued that five added to the other seven which had emancipated, making twelve, has already been increased, until whereas twelve of the original thirteen states were slave states, now eighteen of the states are free states, and only fifteen are slave states. As it had been ordered wisely, so all was going on prosperously; and at the expiration of the present century slavery would either have ceased to exist, or have been languishing or dying in the midst of what would have been practically universal liberty, but for one of those singular accidents, one of those strange events which, occurring in the course of human affairs, produces a reäction, and for a time the cause which was suppressed, goes forward, and the cause which was expected to triumph, recedes. That accident was nothing more than that an ingenious countryman of ours, and a lover of freedom as much as you or I, invented a machine by which he could, with greater ease, extract the seeds from the fibers in cotton balls, and thus, giving a cheaper value to cotton, and increasing the demand for it, for fabrics of human wear, cotton became the production of slave labor in six slave states, or in a portion of them, and became king in those states, commanded

emancipation to cease, shut foreigners out from their ports, demanded a rescinding of all the laws which forbid slavery to spread over the American soil, demanded room for new slave territories and new slave states, and began the dreadful work of preparation for the restoration of the African slave trade.

"You know too well to need that I should repeat it, the rapidity and violence of that reäction. You know how it bought up parties, and statesmen and capitalists through all of the free states, and moulded them as the image-maker moulds the moistened plaster, to its demands. You know how that under the very first earnest, vehe ment, violent demand of slavery, Missouri and Arkansas were admitted into the Union, slave states, by a people under the influence of terror, who had, only twenty years before, abolished the African slave trade, and denied slavery another acre of American soil. You know how Texas, a free country in Mexico, was overrun, first by slaveholders with slaves, and then brought into the American Union, with the consent of yourselves, that five slave states might be made out of its soil. You know how California and Mexico and Utah, free lands, free soil, inhabited by men of free speech and free thought, were conquered and brought into the Union, with the expectationonly baffled by the perseverance of a few men in despair, of whom I was one-of establishing slavery upon the Pacific coast. And you know, finally, how presidents and cabinets, ministers and foreign ministers, and at last the judges, came to confess a faith, alien from the constitution, and alien from the spirit of all our institutions, that the normal condition of every territory under the flag of the United States is not freedom but slavery, and that no power existing on the soil, no power existing in other states, no power existing in the con- . gress of the United States, or in any department of the federal gov ernment, can challenge it, and say, "How came you or what do you here?"

This was the reaction, and it culminated only six years ago. Never, never was a nation more thoroughly demoralized. The whig party, that had affected sympathy for freedom, faltered and failed in the hour of trial, and went down. The democratic party, bolder than ever, became the unblushing advocate of slavery, ceased to be longer, or to pretend to be, a party of human freedom, but became a party of human bonds. There was no party for freedom. Jalousies were engendered between American free born freemen, VOL. IV.

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and the voluntary citizens, and at the time when both should have been engaged in rescuing the constitution, which secured the soil for them and their children, and their children's children, as a patrimony for freedom, they were engaged in internecine hostilities, the only effect of which could be to let slavery go roaming over the whole territories.

Such, my friends, was the real condition of things when I addressed you in the park on South street, only four years ago. You were a thoughtless, an excited, a bewildered people. I saw a party forming for freedom, but it was unorganized and discordant, and filled with mutual jealousies. It was the only hope for freedom, but it failed, and it seemed as if it must fail, though it "charmed never so wisely," to win the American people. It seemed to me then that I saw the good angel of my country rising up and bidding her a last farewell.

But now all is changed. The elements of freedom which that republican party took in at that day are so invigorating, so renewing that they have within four years made it a mighty, yes, an unconquerable host. They have taken the reins of the state government in almost every one of the free states, and they lay close siege to what are left in the hands of slavery. They appear strong and vigorous, and have already achieved free speech, free thought and free debate in three slave states, Delaware, Maryland and Missouri, and the battle recedes immediately after this contest, from the free states into the slave states; and the slaveholders, instead of boasting that they are national, and we republicans, are sectional, are already beginning to feel what it is to be attempting to extend and fortify an institution which is purely sectional, into territories that belong to the nation, against the will of the nation.

It has been long that this reäction has been working, and its history will bring out into a new light controversies that to all around us seemed to be already buried in the past. You, laboring men, and especially you of foreign birth, naturalized citizens, can you tell me why it is that you are here among these men in this community, and in the employment of men whom you accuse so often with sympathy with the negro to your prejudice? Why is it that you are here in a land that you call a land of abolitionists? Why are you not in Virginia and in North Carolina and in South Carolina and in Louisiana, among the slave drivers whom you ap‐

plaud and approve for their inhumanity to the negro? It is because slavery will not tolerate one of you upon its soil. You manufacturers, whose mills have been so often put in motion only to encounter hostile legislation in congress under the influence of the slave power of the slave states, will you tell me why it is that the government of the United States maintains, as its true and settled policy that an American citizen must carry all his materials to the manufacturers and workshops of England to be wrought up into fabrics by the mechanics, artisans and manufacturers of England, and must send his wheat, his corn, his beef and his pork to support those manufacturers in England, instead of bringing the educated and trained artists and machinists of England here to set up his mills, to put his wheels in motion upon the banks of the Mohawk, the Owasco, the Seneca and the Niagara rivers?

The explanation is a simple one slavery wants as little of the industry of the white man in the nation as possible. Can you tell me why it is that the expenses of the government, which have risen in the period of thirty-two years from ten millions of dollars, to eighty, ninety and a hundred millions of dollars annually must be levied in such a way as to discourage American manufacturers, and that the deficiency, if there be any, of revenue, must be paid out of the sales of the public lands of the Unit, d States at a dollar and a quarter per acre, when there are in every city, in every town, in every village, and in every hamlet of the land, poor, unfortunate white men, with their families, seeking and asking for a living upon this public domain,—and willing to convert it into farms, yielding and paying revenue to the United States? It is simply because slavery is unwilling that the free white man should go there. Can you account for the obstinate resistance to the enlargement of the Erie canal, continued so long, on any other ground? Can you tell me why it was that twenty years ago, this whole state was filled with alarm because equal and free education was being extended to the children of the catholic and the foreigner, upon the ground that, as the children of the foreigner were to be future members of the state, it was important, not more to them than to the state itself, that they should be prepared for citizenship?1 Oh! then the Bible was in danger. Oh! then the protestant church

1 See Vol. I, p. xlii, Vol. II, pp. 206, 216.

was to go down. All the hostility to education was the suggestion of slavery in order that free white men might not come to swell the population of the free states, and swarm into the new states beyond the Alleghany mountains.

But all this is ended. The agents, and the parties who were deceived, misled and perverted, who opposed the interests of freedom, have all within six years fallen and disappeared. The whig party once cherished by so many of us, and relied upon with faith and hope against evidence, proved unfaithful at last and perished, and I know not one sound thinking man, however much he was attached to it, that laments its loss. The American party that sought to deceive itself with the idea that it could secure forbearance for freedom in the new alliance formed with slaveholders in the south, suddenly, even more suddenly disappeared, and there is not one man living to vindicate its memory. And so the democratic party had a form and existence a year ago. Where is it now. It has changed its form as often as a guilty dream. It was single, united, unterrified and violent a year ago. Six months passed and it wore two forms in hostile attitude against each other. Six months later the two disappeared, and now it is nowhere. An opposition is organized but it is an organization, not of the democratic party but of three parties. It presents not one candidate, but three candidates for president. It comes up to fight its first, last and desperate battle with the republican party which is engaged in the effort and determination to elect a president by a majority of votes; and this hybrid party comes up and puts into the hands of the electors, ballots for scattering the votes, not concentrating them; to defeat the election of a president of the United States because they cannot agree whom they would elect. Strange confusion of the times, this! Have you ever studied the present creed of the opposition? I will endeavor to recite it for you:

"I believe in intervening in the territories of the United States for slavery; I also fully believe in non-intervening in the territories of the United States for slavery, and I further believe that it is not right either to intervene or to not intervene. Each of these three articles of faith is essential and of saving health to the nation. He that is faithful must believe them all, and he that is faithful must believe one and reject the other two. I believe in Stephen A. Donglas as a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and

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