men of the North would have no modera- | feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, tion, and they have paid the penalty. The to vote on American affairs; and those American party elected a majority of this votes have, in point of fact, accomplished House: had they of the North held fast to the present result. the great American principle of silence on the negro question, and, firmly refusing to join either agitation, stood by the American candidate, they would not now be writhing, crushed beneath an utter overthrow. If they would now destroy the Democrats, they can do it only by returning to the American party. By it alone can a party be created strong at the South as well as at the North. To it alone belongs a principle accepted wherever the American name is heard-the same at the North as at the South, on the Atlantic or the Pacific shore. It alone is free from sectional affiliations at either end of the Union which would cripple it at the other. Its principle is silence, peace, and compromise. It abides by the existing law. It allows no agitation. It maintains the present condition of affairs. It asks no change in any territory, and it will countenance no agitation for the aggrandizement of either section. Though thousands fell off in the day of trial-allured by ambition, or terrified by fear-at the North and at the South, carried away by the torrent of fanaticism in one part of the Union, or driven by the fierce onset of the Democrats in another, who shook Southern institutions by the violence of their attack, and half waked the sleeping negro by painting the Republican as his liberator, still a million of men, on the great day, in the face of both factions, heroically refused to bow the knee to either Baal. They knew the necessities of the times, and they set the example of sacrifice, that others might profit by it. They now stand the hope of the nation, around whose firm ranks the shattered elements of the great majority may rally and vindicate the right of the majority to rule, and of the native of the land to make the law of the land. The high mission of the American is to restore the influence of the interests of the people in the conduct of affairs; to exclude appeals to foreign birth or religious feeling as elements of power in politics; to silence the voice of sectional strife-not by joining either section, but by recalling the people from a profitless and maddening controversy which aids no interest, and shakes the foundation not only of the common industry of the people, but of the Republic itself; to lay a storm amid whose fury no voice can be heard in behalf of the industrial interests of the country, no eye can watch and guard the foreign policy of the government, till our ears may be opened by the crash of foreign war waged for purposes of political and party ambition, in the name, but not by the authority nor for the interests, of the American people. Return, then, Americans of the North, from the paths of error to which in an evil hour fierce passions and indignation have seduced you, to the sound position of the American party-silence on the slavery agitation. Leave the territories as they are-to the operation of natural causes. Prevent aggression by excluding from power the aggressors, and there will be no more wrong to redress. Awake the national spirit to the danger and degradation of having the balance of power held by foreigners. Recall the warnings of Washington against foreign influence here in our midst-wielding part of our sovereignty; and with these sound words of wisdom let us recall the people from paths of strife and error to guard their peace and power; and when once the mind of the people is turned from the slavery agitation, that party which waked the agitation will cease to have power to disturb the peace of the land. The recent election has developed, in an aggravated form, every evil against which This is the great mission of the Amerithe American party protested. Again in the can party. The first condition of success is war of domestic parties, Republican and to prevent the administration from having Democrat have rivalled each other in bid- a majority in the next Congress; for, with ding for the foreign vote to turn the bal- that, the agitation will be resumed for very ance of a domestic election. Foreign different objects. The Ostend manifesto is allies have decided the government of the full of warning; and they who struggle country-men naturalized in thousands on over Kansas may awake and find themthe eve of the election-eagerly struggled selves in the midst of an agitation comfor by competing parties, mad with sec-pared to which that of Kansas was a sumtional fury, and grasping any instrument mer's sea; whose instruments will be, not which would prostrate their opponents. words, but the sword. Again, in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious influence on the political arena. These influences have brought vast multitudes of foreign-born citizens to the polls, ignorant Joshua R. Giddings Against the Fugitive Slave Law. In the House of Representatives, April 25, 1848. "Why, sir, I never saw a panting fugi of American interests, without American tive speeding his way to a land of free dom, that an involuntary invocation did | cent. per annum, an increase equal, allownot burst from my lips, that God would ing for the element of foreign immigration, aid him in his flight! Such are the feel- to the white race, and nearly three times ings of every man in our free states, whose heart has not become hardened in iniquity. I do not confine this virtue to Republicans, nor to Anti-Slavery men; I speak of all men, of all parties, in all Christian communities. Northern Democrats feel it; they ordinarily bow to this higher law of their natures, and they only prove recreant to the law of the 'Most High,' when they regard the interests of the Democratic party as superior to God's law and the rights of mankind. that of the free blacks of the North. But these legal rights of the slave embrace but a small portion of the privileges actually enjoyed by him. He has, by universal custom, the control of much of his own time, which is applied, at his own choice and convenience, to the mechanic arts, to agriculture, or to some other profitable pursuit, which not only gives him the power of purchase over many additional necessaries of life, but over many of its luxuries, and in numerous cases, enables "Gentlemen will bear with me when I him to purchase his freedom when he deassure them and the President that I have sires it. Besides, the nature of the relation seen as many as nine fugitives dining at one of master and slave begets kindnesses, imtime in my own house-fathers, mothers, poses duties (and secures their performhusbands, wives, parents, and children. ance), which exist in no other relation of When they came to my door, hungry and capital and labor. Interest and humanity faint, cold and but partially clad, I did not co-operate in harmony for the well-being turn round to consult the Fugitive Law, of slave labor. Thus the monster objection nor to ask the President what I should do. to our institution of slavery, that it deprives I knew the constitution of my country, and labor of its wages, cannot stand the test of would not violate it. I obeyed the divine a truthful investigation. A slight examinamandate, to feed the hungry and clothe the tion of the true theory of wages, will furnaked. I fed them. I clothed them, gave ther expose its fallacy. Under a system them money for their journey, and sent of free labor, wages are usually paid in them on their way rejoicing. I obeyed money, the representative of productsGod rather than the President. I obeyed under ours, in products themselves. One my conscience, the dictates of my heart, of your most distinguished statesmen and the law of my moral being, the commands patriots, President John Adams, said that of Heaven, and, I will add, the constitu- the difference to the state was "imaginary." tion of my country; for no man of in-"What matters it (said he) whether a telligence ever believed that the framers landlord, employing ten laborers on his of that instrument intended to involve their descendants of the free states in any act that should violate the teachings of the Most High, by seizing a fellowbeing, and returning him to the hell of slavery. If that be treason, make the most of it. "MR. BENNETT, of Mississippi. I want to know if the gentleman would not have gone one step farther? farm, gives them annually as much money as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand?" All experience has shown that if that be the measure of the wages of labor, it is safer for the laborer to take his wages in products than in their fluctuating pecuniary value. Therefore, if we pay in the necessaries and comforts of life more than any given amount of pecuniary wages will "MR. GIDDINGS. Yes, sir; I would buy, then our laborer is paid higher than have gone one step farther. I would have the laborer who receives that amount of driven the slave-catcher who dared pursue wages. The most authentic agricultural them from my premises. I would have statistics of England show that the wages kicked him from my door-yard, if he had of agricultural and unskilled labor in that made his appearance there; or, had he at-kingdom, not only fail to furnish the latempted to enter my dwelling, I would have stricken him down upon the threshold of my door. Robert Toombs on Slavery, At Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24th, 1856. In 1790 there were less than seven hundred thousand slaves in the United States; in 1850 the number exceeded three and one quarter millions. The same authority shows their increase, for the ten years preceding the last census, to have been above twenty-eight per cent., or nearly three per borer with the comforts of our slave, but even with the necessaries of life; and no slaveholder could escape a conviction for cruelty to his slaves who gave his slave no more of the necessaries of life for his labor than the wages paid to their agricultural laborers by the noblemen and gentlemen of England would buy. Under their system man has become less valuable and less cared for than domestic animals; and noble dukes will depopulate whole districts of men to supply their places with sheep, and then with intrepid audacity lecture and denounce American slaveholders. The great conflict between labor ard capital, under free competition, has ever been how the earnings of labor shall be divided between them. In new and sparsely settled countries, where land is cheap, and food is easily produced, and education and intelligence approximate equality, labor tan successfully struggle in this warfare with capital. But this is an exceptional and temporary condition of society. In the Old World this state of things has long since passed away, and the conflict with the lower grades of labor has long since ceased. There the compensation of unskilled labor, which first succumbs to capital, is reduced to a point scarcely adequate to the continuance of the race. The rate of increase is scarcely one per cent. per annum, and even at that rate, population, until recently, was considered a curse; in short, capital has become the master of labor, with all the benefits, without the natural burdens of the relation. In this division of the earnings of labor between it and capital, the southern slave has a marked advantage over the English laborer, and is often equal to the free laborer of the North. Here again we are furnished with authentic data from which to reason. The census of 1850 shows that, on the cotton estates of the South, which is the chief branch of our agricultural industry, one-half of the arable lands are annually put under food crops. This half is usually wholly consumed on the farm by the laborers and necessary animals; out of the other half must be paid all the necessary expenses of production, often including additional supplies of food beyond the produce of the land, which usually equals one-third of the residue, leaving but onethird for net rent. The average rent of land in the older non-slaveholding states is equal to one-third of the gross product, and it not unfrequently amounts to onehalf of it (in England it is sometimes even greater), the tenant, from his portion, paying all expenses of production and the expenses of himself and family. From this statement it is apparent that the farm laborers of the South receive always as much, and frequently a greater portion of the produce of the land, than the laborer in the New or Old England. Besides, here the portion due the slave is a charge upon the whole product of capital and the capital itself; it is neither dependent upon seasons nor subject to accidents, and survives his own capacity for labor, and even the ruin of his master. But it is objected that religious instruction is denied the slave-while it is true that religious instruction and privileges are not enjoined by law in all of the states, the number of slaves who are in connection with the different churches abundantly proves the universality of their enjoyment of those privileges. And a much larger number of the race in slavery enjoy the consolations of religion than the efforts of the combined Christian world have been able to convert to Christianity out of all the millions of their countrymen who remained in their native land. The immoralities of the slaves, and of those connected with slavery, are constant themes of abolition denunciation. They are lamentably great; but it remains to be shown that they are greater than with the laboring poor of England, or any other country. And it is shown that our slaves are without the additional stimulant of want to drive them to crime-we have at least removed from them the temptation and excuse of hunger. Poor human nature is here at least spared the wretched fate of the utter prostration of its moral nature at the feet of its physical wants. Lord Ashley's report to the British Parliment shows that in the capital of that empire, perhaps within the hearing of Stafford House and Exeter Hall, hunger alone daily drives its thousands of men and women into the abyss of crime. It is also objected that our slaves are debarred the benefits of education. This objection is also well taken, and is not without force. And for this evil the slaves are greatly indebted to the abolitionists. Formerly in none of the slaveholding states was it forbidden to teach slaves to read and write; but the character of the literature sought to be furnished them by the abolitionists caused these states to take counsel rather of their passions than their reason, and to lay the axe at the root of the evil; better counsels will in time prevail, and this will be remedied. It is true that the slave, from his protected position, has less need of education than the free laborer, who has to struggle for himself in the warfare of society; yet it is both useful to him, his master, and society. The want of legal protection to the marriage relation is also a fruitful source of agitation among the opponents of slavery. The complaint is not without foundation. This is an evil not yet removed by law; but marriage is not inconsistent with the institution of slavery as it exists among us, and the objection, therefore, lies rather to an incident than to the essence of the system. But in the truth and fact marriage does exist to a very great extent among slaves, and is encouraged and protected by their owners; and it will be found, upon careful investigation, that fewer children are born out of wedlock among slaves than in the capitals of two of the most civilized countries of Europe Austria and France; in the former, onehalf of the children are thus born; in the latter, more than one-fourth. But even in this we have deprived the slave of no pre-existing right. We found the race without any knowledge of or regard for the institution of marriage, and we are reproached with not having as yet secured to it that, with all other blessings of civilization. To protect that and other domestic ties by laws forbidding, under proper regulations, the separation of families, would be wise, proper, and humane; and some of the slave-holding states have already adopted partial legislation for the removal of these evils. But the objection is far more formidable in theory than in practice. The accidents and necessities of life, the desire to better one's condition, produce infinitely a greater amount of separation in families of the white than ever happens to the colored race. This is true even in the United States, where the general condition of the people is prosperous. But it is still more marked in Europe. The injustice and despotism of England towards Ireland has produced more separation of Irish families, and sundered more domestic ties within the last ten years, than African slavery has effected since its introduction into the United States. The twenty millions of freemen in the United States are witnesses of the dispersive injustice of the Old World. The general happiness, cheerfulness, and contentment of slaves attest both the mildness and humanity of the system and their natural adaptation to their condition. They require no standing armies to enforce their obedience; while the evidence of discontent, and the appliances of force to repress it, are everywhere visible among the toiling millions of the earth; even in the northern states of this Union, strikes and mobs, unions and combinations against employers, attest at once the misery and discontent of labor among them. England keeps one hundred thousand soldiers in time of peace, a large navy, and an innumerable police, to secure obedience to her social institutions; and physical force is the sole guarantee of her social order, the only cement of her gigantic empire. I have briefly traced the condition of the African race through all ages and all countries, and described it fairly and truly under American slavery, and I submit that the proposition is fully proven, that his position in slavery among us is superior to any which he has ever attained in any age or country. The picture is not without shade as well as light; evils and imperfections cling to man and all of his works, and this is not exempt from them. Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, On Slave Property, in U. S. Senate, March 11, 1858. Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species of property there recog nized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the inventive genius of our brethren of the north is a source of vast wealth to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one of the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents now before us in this Capitol for renewal was $40,000,000. I cannot believe that the entire capital invested in inventions of this character in the United States can fall short of one hundred and fifty or two hundred million dollars. On what protection does this vast property rest? Just upon that same constitutional protection which gives a remedy to the slave owner when his property is also found outside of the limits of the state in which he lives. Without this protection what would be the condition of the northern inventor? Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law would come to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had stolen his property, "render me up my property, or pay me value for its use." The Senator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he were the counsel of this Vermont inventor, "Sir, if you want protection for your property go to your own state; property is governed by the laws of the state within whose jurisdiction it is found; you have no property in your invention outside of the limits of your state; you cannot go an inch beyond it." Would not this be so? Does not every man see at once that the right of the inventor to his discovery, that the right of the poet to his inspiration, depends upon those principles of eternal justice which God has implanted in the heart of man, and that wherever he cannot exercise them, it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received from God, denies them the protection to which they are entitled? Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senator from Vermont himself has given; take his very case of the Delaware owner of a horse riding him across the line into Pennsylvania. The Senator says: "Now, you see that slaves are not property like other property; if slaves were property like other property, why have you this special clause in your constitution to protect a slave? You have no clause to protect the horse, because horses are recognized as property everywhere." Mr. President, the same fallacy lurks at the bottom of this argument, as of all the rest. Let Pennsylvania exercise her undoubted jurisdiction over persons and things within her own boundary; let her do as she has a perfect right to do-declare that hereafter, within the state of Pennsylvania, there shall be no property in horses, and that no man shall maintain a suit in her courts for the recovery of property in a horse; and where will your horse owner be then? Just where the English poet is now; just where the slaveholder and the inventor would be if the Constitution, foreseeing a difference of opinion in relation to rights in these subject-matters, had not provided the remedy in relation to such property as might easily be plundered. Slaves, if you please, are not property like other property in this: that you can easily rob us of them; but as to the right in them, that man has to overthrow the whole history of the world, he has to overthrow every treatise on jurisprudence, he has to ignore the common sentiment of mankind, he has to repudiate the authority of all that is considered sacred with man, ere he can reach the conclusion that the person who owns a slave, in a country where slavery has been established for ages, has no other property in that slave than the mere title which is given by the statute law of the land where it is found. William Lloyd Garrison Upon the Slavery Question. every citizen a slave-hunter and slave catcher. To say that this 'covenant with death' shall not be annulled-that this agreement with hell' shall continue to stand-that this refuge of lies shall not be swept away-is to hurl defiance at the eternal throne, and to give the lie to Him that sits thereon. It is an attempt, alike monstrous and impracticable, to blend the light of heaven with the darkness of the bottomless pit, to unite the living with the dead, to associate the Son of God with the Prince of Evil. Accursed be the American Union, as a stupendous, republican imposture! " I am accused of using hard language. I admit the charge. I have been unable to find a soft word to describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it. The man who makes a chattel of his brother-what is he? The man who keeps back the hire of his laborers by fraud-what is he? They who prohibit the circulation of the Biblewhat are they? They who compel three millions of men and women to herd together like brute beasts-what are they? "Tyrants! confident of its overthrow, They who sell mothers by the pound, and proclaim not to your vassals, that the children in lots to suit purchasers-what American Union is an experiment of free- are they? I care not what terms are apdom, which, if it fails, will forever demon- plied to them, provided they do apply. If strate the necessity of whips for the backs, they are not thieves, if they are not and chains for limbs of people. Know tyrants, if they are not men stealers, I that its subversion is essential to the should like to know what is their true triumph of justice, the deliverance of the character, and by what names they may oppressed, the vindication of the brother- be called. It is as mild an epithet to say hood of the race. It was conceived in sin, that a thief is a thief, as to say that a spade and brought forth in iniquity; and its is a spade. Words are but the signs of career has been marked by unparalleled ideas. A rose by any other name would hypocrisy, by high-handed tyranny, by a smell as sweet.' Language may be misapbold defiance of the omniscience and plied, and so be absurd or unjust; as for omnipotence of God. Freedom indignantly example, to say that an abolitionist is a disowns it, and calls for its extinction; for fanatic, or that a slave-holder is an honest within its borders are three millions of man. But to call things by their right slaves, whose blood constitutes its cement, names is to use neither hard nor improper whose flesh forms a large and flourishing language. Epithets may be rightly apbranch of its commerce, and who are plied, it is true, and yet be uttered in a ranked with four-footed beasts and creep-hard spirit, or with a malicious design. ing things. To secure the adoption of the What then? Shall we discard all terms constitution of the United States, first, that which are descriptive of crime, because the African slave trade till that time a they are not always used with fairness and feeble, isolated, colonial traffic-should, propriety? He who, when he sees oppres for at least twenty years, be prosecuted as sion, cries out against it—who, when he a national interest, under the American beholds his equal brother trodden under flag, and protected by the national arm; foot by the iron hoof of despotism, rushes secondly, that slavery holding oligarchy, to his rescue-who, when he sees the weak created by allowing three-fifths of the overborne by the strong, takes his side slave-holding population to be represented with the former, at the imminent peril of by their taskmasters, should be allowed a his own safety-such a man needs no permanent seat in congress; thirdly, that certificate to the excellence of his temper, the slave system should be secured against or the sincerity of his heart, or the disininternal revolt and external invasion, by terestedness of his conduct. Or is the the united physical force of the country; apologist of slavery, he who can see the fourthly, that not a foot of national terri- victim of thieves lying bleeding and helptory should be granted, on which the pant-less on the cold earth, and yet turn aside, ing fugitive from slavery might stand, and like the callous-hearted priest or Levite, be safe from his pursuers, thus making who needs absolution. Let us call tyrants, |