Some of these societies contain as many as four thou sand members, and none of them I believe less than fifiy. On a fair calculation, it may be presumed that not less than one hundred thousand persons in the nonslaveholding States are united in these societies, and their numbers are increasing daily with a rapidity almost beyond conception-a disciplined corps, who have pledged life and fortune to the great purpose of emancipation.

That the spirit, means, purposes, and plans, of these societies may appear more fully, I will refer to the "Address of the American Anti-slavery Society," at its last annual meeting, which I have in my hand, and ask permission of the House that the Clerk may read. (a)

Here, sir, is a number of the paper entitled "Human Rights"-a neat, well-printed sheet. Here are several numbers of the "Anti-slavery Record," on the outside of each of which is a picture representing a master flogging naked slaves, and each of which contain within pictures equally revolting. Here is a handful of the little primer called the "Slave's Friend." On the cov ers and within each of these are also pictures calculated to excite the feelings and to nurture the incendiary spark in the tender bosom of the child. And here, sir, is "The Emancipator," a large and handsome paper. And that you may understand the spirit and principles which it inculcates, I will read to the House a paragraph from a number dated New York, November, 1835.

"The Alternative.-William Wertenbaker, assistant postmaster, and librarian of the University of Virginia, gives notice that he has committed to the flames a copy of Human Rights we sent him; and very gravely asks, Which of the two do you prefer-a perpetuity of slavery, or a dissolution of the Union? The latter, we say, by all odds, if we must choose. We are for union, but not with slavery. We will give the Union for the abolition of slavery, if nothing else will gain it; but if we cannot gain it at all, then the South is welcome to a dissolution- the sooner the better. The slaveholders may as well understand, first as last, that the Union' may have other uses to them than that of a lash to shake over the heads of northern freemen."

It speaks for itself. I make no commentary. Here, sir, is a pamphlet called the " Anti-slavery Reporter," published monthly, I believe, by this society. Here is a "Quarterly Anti-slavery Magazine," of very respectable size, edited by Elizar Wright, Jr. Here is a pamphlet entitled "Anti-slavery Hymns," of which there are nineteen. They purport to be for the use of the "monthly concerts for the enslaved" in the city of New York, and the publication of a more copious collection in Boston is announced. Here is a small book entitled "Juvenile Poems." It contains, besides a great number of doggrel articles of the most inflammatory character, some nine or ten disgusting prints; all of which are designed for the use of free American children of every complexion." Here is a pamphlet written by a "Man of Color," and here are a quantity of sermons, essays, reports, letters, &c., all intended for the same incendiary purposes.

I hold, also, in my hand, that most powerful engine in party warfare, an "Anti-slavery Almanac for 1836." From this allow me to read two short extracts. The following will show the political tendency of this abolition agitation: "We are rewarding slaveholders for their usurpation and injustice, by allowing them to send twenty-five Representatives to Congress to represent their slave property." It has been said that "the petitioners have no further object than merely to wipe from the national escutcheon the stain affixed to it by permitting slavery to exist at the seat of Government of the United States." In answer to that allow me to quote the following passage, and there is scarcely a publica.

[FEB. 1, 1836.

tion that I have exhibited here to-day in which the same sentiment is not expressed: "Should you abolish slavery in the District of Columbia alone, it would heave the foundation of the system in every State in the Union." Nor is this work without its pictures, libelling the slaveholders with their vile caricatures. 'To illustrate more fully the political tendency of the extraordinary excitement on this subject, although I do not intend on this occasion to discuss that branch of the question, I will refer the House to an extract from the "Anti-slavery Circular," printed at Medina, Ohio, December, 1835, which I hold in my hand, and which I again ask the favor of the House to permit the Clerk to read. (6)

Sir, while we are discussing the question of the reception of these petitions, movements are making at the North, and societies are springing up like mushrooms. Here are the proceedings of a meeting held within a few weeks past at Lowell, Massachusetts, the centre of the tariff interest, at which was formed a "Young Men's Anti-slavery Society," the preamble of whose constitution I will read. (c) Here is a circular, dated "Pawtucket, Rhode Island, January 12, 1836," calling a "Rhode Island Anti-slavery Convention, to meet shortly at Providence. It is signed by eight hundred and forty persons. I will read from it the following remarkable passage, from which it may be seen how deep the roots of this hostility to our institutions have struck into the foundations of society.

"Our country friends we hope will attend as numer. ously as they have signed the circular. The wealth and aristocracy of our cities are against us. They sympa. thize not with "the poor and needy," but with "the arrogant and him of high looks." Let our laboring men, then, the mechanics and the farmers, attend the convention. They can easily arrange their business so as to make it convenient to be in Providence at that time."

Here, sir, is the prospectus of the sixth volume of the "Liberator," published at Boston, by Isaac Knapp. Prefixed to it is an incendiary picture, and it contains the following passage, which exhibits, possibly with some exaggeration, in a strong point of view, the extent of the agitation on this subject throughout the non-slaveholding States :

"The sixth volume of the Liberator commences on the 1st of January, 1836. During the term of its existence, it has succeeded, in despite of calumny and strong opposition, in dispelling the apathy of the nation, creating an extraordinary and most auspicious interest for the oppressed, inducing a rigid investigation of the subject, and securing a host of mortal combatants, who are pledged never to retreat from the field. The wrongs of the slaves--the danger of keeping them longer in bondage--the duty of giving them immediate freedomare the topics of conversation or discussion in all debating societies-in lyceums-in stages and steamboats-in pulpits and in periodicals--in the family circle, and between a man and his friend. The current of public sentiment is turning, and soon it will roll, a mighty river, sweeping away in its healthful and resistless career all the pollutions of slavery."

This prospectus is accompanied by an anonymous com. munication, for which, of course, I cannot vouch, which states that Doctor Channing has softened the asperity of his remarks on Thompson, the foreign anti-slavery missionary, in his late work on slavery. That it has, in consequence, been stereotyped by the abolitionists, and that the demand for it is insatiable. My colleague, [Mr. PICKENS,] in the course of his remarks the other day, made an allusion to Doctor Channing, which drew from the gentleman from Massachusetts who sits near me, [Mr. Hoan,] a warm and passionate eulogium. He said he was a man who had stamped his genius upon the

I think I may say that any appeal to the slaveholders will be in vain. In the whole history of the question of emancipation, in Europe or America, I do not remember a dozen instances of masters freeing their slaves, at least during their own lifetime, from any qualms of conscience. If they are seized with these qualms, they usually sell their slaves first, and then give in their adhesion to the cause, as has been the case with some whom I could mention.

The abolitionist can appeal only to the hopes or fears or interest of the slaveholder, to induce him to emanci pate his slaves. So far as our hopes are concerned, I believe I can say we are perfectly satisfied. We have been born and bred in a slave country. Our habits are accommodated to them, and so far as we have been able to observe other states of society abroad, we see nothing to invite us to exchange our own; but, on the contrary, every thing to induce us to prefer it above all others. As to our fears, I know it has been said by a distinguished Virginian, and quoted on this floor, that the fire bell in Richmond never rings at night, but the mother presses her infant more closely to her breast, in dread of servile insurrection." Sir, it is all a flourish. There may be nervous men and timid women, whose imaginations are haunted with unwonted fears, among us, as there are in all communities on earth; but in no part of the world have men of ordinary firmness less fear of danger from their operatives than we have. The fires which in a few years have desolated Normandy and Anjou, the great machine burning in the heart of England, the bloody and eternal struggles of the Irish Catholics, and the mobs which for some years past have figured in the northern States, burning convents, tearing down houses, spreading dismay and ruin through their cities, and even taking life, are appropriate illustrations of the peace and security of a community whose laborers are all free. On the other hand, during the two hundred years that slavery has existed in this country, there has, I believe, been but one serious insurrection, and that one very limited in its extent.

The appeal, however, to our interest, is that which might appear to promise much success; for whatever it is the interest of a community to do, that (sooner or la ter) it will be sure to do. If you will look over the world, you will find that in all those countries where slavery has been found unprofitable, it has been abolished. In northern latitudes, where no great agricultural staple is produced, and where care, skill, and a close economy, enter largely into the elements of production, free labor has been found more valuable than that of slaves. You will there find labor usually exercised in small combinations, under the immediate eye of a watchful and frugal master. I speak more particularly of those who cultivate the soil; but the large masses of mechanical operatives who are brought together form no exception to the principle. They are classified. There is an accurate division of their labor; each branch of it requires peculiar art, and, in the higher departments, a degree of skill must be attained, to produce which, stronger stimulants are necessary than can be ordinarily applied to slaves.

In such countries the dominant classes have also found it to their advantage to permit each individual to accu mulate for himself, and to deprive him of a portion of his earnings, sufficient for their purposes, through the operations of the Government. Hence the partial emancipation of the serfs of the continent of Europe; hence the abandonment of villeinage in England; and hence the emancipation of slaves in the free States of this Union. But in southern latitudes, where great agricultural staples are produced, and where not only a large combination of labor under the direction of one head is required, but it is also necessary that the connexion between the operatives and that head should

[FEB. 1, 1836.

be absolute and indissoluble, domestic slavery is indispensable. To such a country it is as natural as the clime itself as the birds and beasts to which that climate is congenial. The camel loves the desert; the reindeer seeks everlasting snows; the wild fowl gather to the waters; and the eagle wings his flight above the mountains. It is equally the order of Providence that slavery should exist among a planting people, beneath a southern sun. There the laborer must become a fixture of the soil. His task is not from day to day, nor from month to month; but from season to season, and from year to year. He must be there to clear, to break, to plant, to till, to gather, to fallow, and to clear again; and he must be kept there by a never ceasing, unavoidable, and irresistible force. The system of "strikes," so universally practised in all other kinds of labor, would desolate a planting country in five years. If, in the heat of the crop, when the loss of one or two days even may irreparably ruin it, the laborers were to abandon the fields and demand higher wages, the owner would have no other alternative than to say to them, “work, and take enough to satisfy yourselves"-which would, of course, be all. Sir, it is not the interest of the planters of the South to emancipate their slaves, and it never can be shown to be so.

Slavery is said to be an evil; that it impoverishes the people, and destroys their morals. If it be an evil, it is one to us alone, and we are contented with it-why should others interfere? But it is no evil. On the contrary, I believe it to be the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region. For without it, our fertile soil and our fructifying climate would have been given to us in vain. And as to its impoverishing and demoralizing influence, the simple and irresistible answer to that is, that the history of the short period during which we have enjoyed it has rendered our southern country proverbial for its wealth, its genius, and its manners.

Failing, as the abolitionists must do, in every appeal to the slaveholder, let us see with what probability of success they can call upon the Government to emancipate our negroes. There are about 2,300,000 slaves at this moment in the United States, and their annual increase is about 60,000. Sir, even the British Government did not dare to emancipate the slaves of its enslaved West India subjects without some compensation. They gave them about sixty per cent. of their value. It could scarcely be expected that this Government would undertake to free our slaves without paying for them. Their value, at $400, average, (and they are now worth more than that,) would amount to upwards of nine hundred millions. The value of their annual increase, alone, is twenty-four millions of dollars; so that to free them in one hundred years, without the expense of taking them from the country, would require an annual appropriation of between thirty-three and thirty-four millions of dollars. The thing is physically impossible.

But it is impossible for another reason: the moment this House undertakes to legislate upon this subject, it dissolves the Union. Should it be my fortune to have a seat upon this floor, I will abandon it the instant the first decisive step is taken, looking towards legislation on this subject. I will go home to preach, and if I can, to practise, disunion, and civil war, if needs be. A revolution must ensue, and this republic sink in blood.

The only remaining chance for the abolitionists to succeed in their nefarious schemes will be by appealing to the slaves themselves; and, say what they will, this is the great object at which they aim. For this are all their meetings, publications, lectures, and missions; to excite a servile insurrection, and, in the language of the miscreant Thompson, to "teach the slave to cut his master's throat." This will be no easy task. Sir, it is

a proverb, that no human being is perfectly contented with his lot, and it may be true that some strolling emissary may extract, occasionally, complaints from southern slaves, and spread them before the world. But such in stances are rare. As a class, I say it boldly, there is not a happier, more contended race upon the face of the earth. I have been born and brought up in the midst of them, and, so far as my knowledge and experience extend, I should say they have every reason to be happy. Lightly tasked, well clothed, well fed-far better than the free laborers of any country in the world, our own and those perhaps of the other States of this confederacy alone excepted--their lives and persons protected by the law, all their sufferings alleviated by the kindest and most interested care, and their domestic affections cherished and maintained, at least so far as I have known, with conscientious delicacy.

A gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. ADAMS] has introduced upon this floor the abolition cant of wives and husbands, parents and children, torn from each other's arms, and separated forever. Such scenes but rarely, very rarely, happen. I do not believe such separations are near so common among slaves, as divorces are among white persons, where they can be with much facility obtained. I am very sure that children and parents do not so often part as, in the ordinary course of emigration in this country, they do among the freest and proudest of our land. Sir, our slaves are a peaceful, kind-hearted, and affectionate race; satisfied with their lot, happy in their comforts, and devoted to their masters. It will be no easy thing to seduce them from their fidelity. But if, by an artful and delusive appeal to his excited passions, the abolitionist should succeed in drawing the slave into his fiendish purposes, our never-sleeping watchfulness would speedily detect every conspiracy that might be formed. Our habits in this respect have become a second instinct. Our vigilance is as prompt and personal as our courage--as faithful a guardian, and not more troublesome. It does not arise from fear, but from the fact that we ourselves, to a great extent, constitute our own police, and, in guarding against minor evils, will not fail to discover every danger of great magnitude. Such has been and such will always be the case. Every insurrection which has yet been meditated-and there have been but very few--when not discovered by some faithful slave, has been soon discovered by the whites, the unfortunate occurrence at Southampton only excepted--if that can be called an insurrection which was the bloody outbreak ing of six drunken wretches.

Sir, I believe that every appeal to the slave to assist, through the horrid process of burning and assassination, in his own emancipation, much as it is (in secret at least) cherished, will be without success. I feel firmly convinced that, under any circumstances, and by any means, emancipation, gradual or immediate, is impossible. We may be disturbed in our comforts, harassed, injured, perhaps some partial sufferings may be the consequences of their mad and savage projects; but slavery can never be abolished. The doom of Ham has been branded on the form and features of his African descendants. The hand of fate has united his color and his destiny. Man cannot separate what God hath joined.

But, Mr. Speaker, admitting for a moment that the abolitionist could accomplish all his objects. Suppose the bonds of the slave were broken peacefully, and he was turned loose to choose his life and occupation on the face of the earth, what would probably be his actual state? Sir, we have some experience on this subject. I hold in my hand a paper containing an account of the situation of a colony of free blacks in Brown county, in Ohio, which I ask permission for the Clerk to read. (d)

Such, sir, are the blessed fruits of abolition; and to

[H. OF R.

make such miserable and degraded wretches as these are we called on to give up our happy, industrious, and useful slaves-to strike out of existence nine hundred millions of active and inestimable capital, and impoverish and desolate the fairest region of the globe. But it is said that this is the dark side of the picture, and that emancipation, "gradual emancipation," would produce far better consequences. Although I am perfectly satisfied that no human process can elevate the black man to an equality with the white--admitting that it could be done-are we prepared for the consequences which then must follow? Are the people of the North prepared to restore to them two fifths of their rights of voters, and place their political power on an equality with their own? Are we prepared to see them mingling in our legislation? Is any portion of this country prepared to see them enter these halls and take their seats by our sides, in perfect equality with the white representatives of an Anglo-Saxon race-to see them fill that chair--to see them placed at the heads of your Departments; or to see, perhaps, some Othello, or Toussaint, or Boyer, gifted with genius and inspired by ambition, grasp the presidential wreath, and wield the destinies of this great republic? From such a picture I turn with irrepressible disgust. But, sir, no such consequences as either of these views exhibit can take place with us. There is no such thing as gradual emancipation, even if we were to consent to it. Those who know the negro character cannot doubt, what the recent experiments in the West Indies fully prove, that the first step you take towards emancipation bursts at once and forever the fetters of the slave. our country, where the two classes of population are so nearly equal, such a state of things as now exist in Jamaica would not last a day, an hour. Sir, any species of emancipation with us would be followed instantly by civil war between the whites and blacks. A bloody, exterminating war, the result of which could not be doubtful, although it would be accompanied with horrors such as history has not recorded. The blacks would be annihilated, or once more subjugated and reduced to slaveSuch a catastrophe would be inevitable.

ry.

In

Permit me now, sir, for a moment to look into the causes of this vast and dangerous excitement; for it is intimately connected with the true merits of this important question. I am not disposed to attribute it to any peculiar feelings of hostility entertained by the North against the South, arising from position merely. It is indeed natural that a people not owning slaves should entertain a strong aversion to domestic servitude. It is natural that the descendants of the Puritans, without any deep investigation of the subject, should have an instinctive hostility to slavery in every shape. It is natural that foreigners-with whom the North is crowded, just released themselves from bondage, extravagant in their notions of the freedom of our institutions, and profoundly ignorant of the principles on which society and government are organized--should view with horror the condition of the southern operatives. And here let me say that these opinions, so natural, so strong, and so distinctly marking the geographical divisions of our country, indicate differences which, if pushed much further, will inevitably separate us into two nations. A separation which I should regard as a calamity to the whole human race, and which we of the South will endeavor to avert by every means save the sacrifice of our liberties, or the subversion of our domestic institutions.

But other causes are at work. This excitement belongs to the spirit of the age. Every close observer must perceive that we are approaching, if we have not already reached, a new era in civilization. The man of the nineteenth century is not the man of the seventeenth, and widely different from him of the eighteenth. Within the last sixty years there have been greater changes-