F. G. De Fontaine

“ Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana, will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to the slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men. ”

“ One of the commanding characteristics of the present age is the spirit of agitation, collision and discord which has broken forth in every department of social and political life. While it has been an era of magnificent enterprises and unrivalled prosperity, it has likewise been an era of convulsion, which has well nigh upturned the foundations of the government. Never was this truth more evident than at the present moment. A single topic occupies the public mind—Union or Disunion—and is one of pre-eminently absorbing interest to every citizen. ”

“ The trade was thus carried on, with all its historic inhumanity, by the sires and grandsires of the very men and women, who, for thirty years, have been denouncing slavery as a sin against God, and slaveholders as the vilest class of men and tyrants who ever disgraced a civilised community; and the very wealth in which, in a large degree, these agitators now revel, has descended to them as the fruit of the slave trade in which their fathers grew fat. ”

“ What spirit of man ever stood upon earth with bolder front and wielded fiercer weapons? Stirring harangues! Stern resolutions! Fretful memorials! Angry protests! Incendiary pamphlets at the South! Hostile legislation at the North! Underground railroads at the West! Resistance to the Constitution! Division of the Union! Military contribution! Sharpe’s rifles! Higher law! If this is not belligerence enough, Mohammed’s work and the old Crusades were an appeal to argument and not to arms. ”

“ The black portrait of Southern slavery has been indelibly painted upon their imaginations until the pure, solid, consistent religion of our forefathers no longer exists. These reverend Pecksniffs can hardly bear to look upon a Southern man without a feeling of revenge; they seldom look at a Bible without muttering a blasphemy, and cannot speak of the South and its institutions without letting out their dream of blood and desire. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to advert further to the progress of the anti-slavery element in Congress than to merely recal the tumults excited at the beginning of every session by the election of a Speaker, and the constant ebb and flow of agitation upon the one absorbing theme which has at last, through the efforts of the abolitionists and their allies, come to be the single sentiment, upon which hang suspended the destiny and hopes of a nation. ”

“ The two great antagonistic parties of the present day are the children of its vile creation. It has excited the very fury of antagonism; it has shaken the pulpit with excommunicating thunders; it has indulged in the most bitter invective, deluged the country with invented instances of Southern barbarity, denounced the Constitution as a “league with hell,” and scattered its venom in every household of the free States, until men, women and children have become imbued with its contaminating infection. ”

“ Looking over their own homeless, unfed, ragged millions, their filthy hovels and mud floors, worse than the common abode of pigs and poultry, crowded cellars, hungry paupers, children at work under ground—a community of wretchedness such as the American slave never dreamed of—British philanthropists wrote, declaimed, and expended untold sums upon a supposed abuse three thousand miles off, with which they have no connection, civil, social or political, and of which they know comparatively nothing. ”

“ Our object is the abolition of slavery throughout the land; and whether in the prosecution of our object, this party goes up, or the other party goes down, it is nothing to us. We cannot alter our course one hair’s breadth, nor accept a compromise of our principles, for the hearty adoption of our principles. I am for meddling with slavery everywhere—attacking it by night and by day, in season and out of season— (no, it can never be out of season) —in order to effect its overthrow. ”

“ If the slaveholder loves the Union, I hate it. The love of so sagacious a tyrant is authority enough for my hate. If the slaveholder clings to the Union, it is instinct. When they set horses to run in the Roman races, each horse bears about him a little network of pointed pricks, that the faster he goes, make him run yet faster. I would set the slaveholder running with four millions of slaves for the pricks. Dissolution is my method for that race. Dissolution, in other words, is only another method of letting natural causes have free play. ”

“ That Congress has a right to abolish slavery in that District seems reasonable, though we fear it will meet with some opposition, so very sensitive are the slaveholding community to every movement relating to the abolition of slavery. At the same time, it would furnish to the world a beautiful pledge of their sincerity if they would unite with the non-slaveholding States, and by a unanimous vote proclaim freedom to every soul within sight of the capital of this free government. ”

“ Of the five broad beautiful bands of Christianity thrown around the North and the South—Presbyterian, old school and new, Episcopalian, Methodist and Baptist, to say nothing of the divisions of Bible, tract and missionary societies—three are already ruptured—and whenever an anniversary brings together the various delegates of these organizations, the sad spectacle is presented of division, wrangling, vituperation and reproach, that gives to religion and its professors anything but that meekness of spirit with which it is wont to be invested. ”

“ The spirit of affection created and fostered by the revolution—the cords binding together a common country in a common struggle and a common destiny—were too strong in the breasts of our revolutionary fathers for them to countenance the feeble efforts even of those prompted by motives of humanity for the immediate emancipation of the slaves, and by almost the entire North of that period they were regarded with general disfavor, as an unwarrantable interference with an already established institution of the country. ”

“ Oh, Our Father, we appeal to Thee, the searcher of hearts, for the purity and sincerity of our motives. If we are in violation of any compact still obligatory upon us with those States from which we have separated in order to set up a new government—if we are acting in rebellion to and in contravention of piety towards God and good faith to our fellow man, we cannot hope for Thy presence and blessing. ”

“ It appears to have been forgotten that whether slavery be admitted upon one foot of territory or not, it cannot affect the question of its sinfulness in the slightest degree, and that if every nook and corner of the national fabric were open to the institution, not a single slave would be added to the present number, or that, if excluded, their number would not be a single one the less. ”

“ They have scattered the seeds of abolitionism until a majority of the voters of the free States have become animated by a fixed purpose not only to prevent the further growth of the slave power, but to beard the lion in his den.
The power of the North has been consolidated, and for the first time in the history of the country it is wielded as a sectional weapon against the interests of the South. The government is now in the hands of men elected by Northern votes, who regard slavery as a curse and a crime, and they will have the means necessary to accomplish their purpose. ”

“ Accustomed to doing as it pleases, New England “morality” has usually accomplished what it has undertaken. It has attacked the Sunday mails, assaulted Free Masonry, triumphed over the intemperate use of ardent spirits, and finally engaged in an onslaught upon the slavery of the South. Its channels have been societies, meetings, papers, lectures, sermons, resolutions, memorials, protests, legislation, private discussion, public addresses; in a word, every conceivable method whereby appeal may be brought to mind. ”

“ The truth is, the lot of the people of the South is not more implicated in that of the slaves than is the lot of the slaves in the people of the South. In their mutual relations, they must survive or perish together. In the language of another, “The worst foes of the black race are those who have intermeddled in their behalf. By nature, the most affectionate and loyal of all races beneath the sun, they are also the most helpless: and no calamity can befal them greater than the loss of that protection they enjoy under this patriarchal system. ”

“ Like the marvellous tent given by the fairy Banou to Prince Achmed, which, when folded up, became an ornament in the delicate hands of women, but, spread out, afforded encampment to mighty armies; so is this question of abolitionism, to which the present overwhelming trouble of our land is to be traced, in its capacity to encompass all things, and its ability to attach itself even to the amenities and refinements of life. ”

“ The one idea preeminent above all others is abolition!
It is worthy of notice in this connection that most abolitionists know little or nothing of slavery and slaveholders beyond what they have learned from excited, caressed and tempted fugitives, or from a superficial, accidental or prejudiced observation. From distorted facts, gross misrepresentations, and frequently malicious caricatures, they have come to regard Southern slaveholders as the most unprincipled men in the Universe, with no incentive but avarice, no feeling but selfishness, and no sentiment but cruelty. ”

“ If they have advocated a measure, its purpose has been dissolution. If they have prevented the execution of the laws, the purpose has been dissolution; if they have made war or made peace, or taken any step during their unholy career, the one end and object has been the overthrow of the government and the freedom of the slave, no matter what may be the consequence. ”

“ No one will doubt my earnest desire to see slavery extinguished, but that desire can only be gratified by lawful means, a strict regard to the rights of property, or what the law declares property, and a constant repugnance to the shedding of blood. ”

“ The same sentiment, however, runs through them all, and abolition, in one way or another, is not less a doctrine of the Republican party of 1860 than it was of the Liberty party of 1840, to which it owes its birth. “Abolitionism is clearly its informing and actuating soul; and fanaticism is a blood-hound that never bolts its track when it has once lapped blood. The elevation of their candidate is far from being the consummation of their aims. ”

“ Even there you will found States only for free labor to maintain and occupy. The interest of the whole race demands the ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that consummation shall be allowed to take effect, with needful and wise precautions against sudden change and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, is all that remains for you to decide. The white man needs this continent to labor upon. ”

“ I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief, that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”
“I have always hated slavery as much as any abolitionist. I have always been an old line Whig. ”

“ No man can be considered a martyr unless he not only suffers but is witness to the truth; and he does not bear this testimony who seeks a lawful object by illegal means. Any other course taken for the abolition of slavery can only delay the consummation we so devoutly wish, besides exposing the community to the hazard of an insurrection perhaps less hurtful to the master than the slave. ”

“ With them the rights of property are nothing; the deficiency of the powers of the general government is nothing; the acknowledged and incontestible powers of the State are nothing; civil war, a dissolution of the Union, and the overthrow of a government in which are concentrated the fondest hopes of the civilized world, are nothing. ”