Harriet Beecher Stowe

“ Young, beautiful, heroic, brought up by his mother in the sacred doctrines of human liberty, he gave his life an offering as to a holy cause. He died. No slave-woman came to tell his mother of God’s justice, for many slaves have reason to call her blessed.
Now we ask you, Would you change places with that Southern mother? Would you not think it a great misfortune for a son or daughter to be brought into such a system?—a worse one to become so perverted as to defend it? ”

“ Then came the struggle between Freedom and Slavery in the new Territory,—the battle for Kansas and Nebraska, fought with fire and sword and blood, where a race of men, of whom John Brown was the immortal type, acted over again the courage, the perseverance, and the military religious ardour of the old Covenanters of Scotland, and, like them, redeemed the Ark of Liberty at the price of their own blood, and blood dearer than their own. ”

“ Why does the English nation, which has made itself memorable to all time as the destroyer of negro slavery, which has shrunk from no [Pg 51] sacrifices to free its own character from that odious stain, and to close all the countries of the world against the slave-merchant,—why is it that the nation which is at the head of Abolitionism, not only feels no sympathy with those who are fighting against the slaveholding conspiracy, but actually desires its success? ”

“ When these words reached us, we said, “We can wait; our friends in England will soon see whither this conflict is tending.” A year and a half have passed; step after step has been taken for Liberty; chain after chain has fallen, till the march of our armies is choked and clogged by the glad flocking of [Pg 53] emancipated slaves; the day of final emancipation is set; the Border States begin to move in voluntary consent; universal freedom for all dawns like the sun in the distant horizon: and still no voice from England. ”

“ By another act, equally grand in principle, and far more important in its results, slavery is for ever excluded from the Territories of the United States.
By another act, America has consummated the long-delayed treaty with Great Britain for the suppression of the slave-trade. In ports whence slave-vessels formerly sailed with the connivance of the port-officers, the Administration has placed men who stand up to their duty, and for the first time in our history the slave-trader is convicted and hung as a pirate. ”

“ Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas: its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. ”

“ A brother or father turning against one in the hour of trouble, a friend sleeping in the Gethsemane of our mortal anguish, does not always find us armed with divine patience. We loved England; we respected, revered her; we were bound to her by ties of blood and race. Alas! must all these declarations be written in the past tense?
But that we may not be thought to have over-estimated the popular tide against us, we shall express our sense of it in the words of an English writer, one of the noble few who have spoken the truth on our side. ”

“ The conflict had become narrowed down to the one point of the extension of slave-territory. If the slaveholders could get States enough, they could control and rule; if they were outnumbered by Free States, their institutions, by the very law of their nature, would die of suffocation. Therefore, Fugitive-Slave Law, District of Columbia, Inter-State Slave-Trade, and what not, were all thrown out of sight for a grand rally on this vital point. ”

“ They remain at this day a silent witness of a most singular tide of feeling which at that time swept over the British [Pg 9] community, and made for itself an expression, even at the risk of offending the sensibilities of an equal and powerful nation.
No reply to that address, in any such tangible and monumental form, has ever been possible. It was impossible to canvass our vast territories with the zealous and indefatigable industry with which England was canvassed for signatures. In America, those possessed of the spirit which led to this efficient action had no leisure for it. ”

“ To prove the doctrine that all men are not equal. To establish the doctrine that the white may enslave the negro.
It is natural to sympathize with people who are fighting for their rights: but if these prove to be the right of selling children by the pound, and trading in husbands and wives as merchantable articles, should not Englishmen think twice before giving their sympathy? A pirate-ship on the high seas is fighting for independence! ”

“ Remember, then, that wishing success to this slavery-establishing effort is only wishing to the sons and daughters of the South all the curses that God has written against oppression. Mark our words! If we succeed, [Pg 61] the children of these very men who are now fighting us will rise up to call us blessed. Just as surely as there is a God who governs in the world, so surely all the laws of national prosperity follow in the train of equity; and if we succeed, we shall have delivered the children’s children of our misguided brethren from the wages of sin, which is always and everywhere death. ”

“ It is temperate, just, and kindly, and on the high ground of Christian equality, where it places itself, may be regarded as a perfectly proper expression of sentiment, as between blood-relations and equals in two different nations.
The signatures to this appeal are not the least remarkable part of it; for, beginning at the very steps of the throne, they go down to the names of women in the very humblest [Pg 8] conditions in life, and represent all that Great Britain possesses, not only of highest and wisest, but of plain, homely common sense and good feeling. ”

“ It is the first government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to Nature and the ordination of Providence in furnishing the material of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race and in violation of the laws of Nature. Our system commits no such violation of Nature’s laws. The negro, by Nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. ”

“ The time has come, however, when such an astonishing page has been turned in the anti-slavery history of America, that the women of our country, feeling that the great anti-slavery work to which their English sisters exhorted them is almost done, may properly and naturally feel moved to reply to their appeal, and lay before them the history of what has occurred since the receipt of their affectionate and Christian address. ”

“ It is to a Union which has abolished slavery in the district of Columbia, and interdicted slavery in the Territories,—which vigorously represses the slave-trade, and hangs the convicted slaver as a pirate,—which necessitates emancipation by denying expansion to slavery, and facilitates it by the offer of compensation. Any Slaveholding States which should return to such a Union might fairly be supposed to return with the purpose of peaceable emancipation. ”

“ With this understanding and provision, wherever our armies march, they carry liberty with them. For, be it remembered that our army is almost entirely a volunteer one, and that the most zealous and ardent volunteers are those who have been for years fighting with tongue and pen the Abolition battle. So marked is the character of our soldiers in this [Pg 29] respect, that they are now familiarly designated in the official military despatches of the Confederate States as “The Abolitionists.” Conceive the results, when an army, so empowered by national law, marches through a slave-territory. ”

“ By this power it has been this year decreed that every slave of a rebel who reaches the lines of our army becomes a free man; that [Pg 28] all slaves found deserted by their masters become free men; that every slave employed in any service for the United States thereby obtains his liberty; and that every slave employed against the United States in any capacity obtains his liberty: and lest the army should contain officers disposed to remand slaves to their masters, the power of judging and delivering up slaves is denied to army-officers, and all such acts are made penal. ”

“ In this day of great deeds and great heroisms, this solemn hour when the Mighty Redeemer is coming to break every yoke, do we hear such voices from England?
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This very day the writer of this has been present at a solemn religious festival in the national capital, given at the home of a portion of those fugitive slaves who have fled to our lines for protection,—who, under the shadow of our flag, find sympathy and succour. The national day of thanksgiving was there kept by over a thousand redeemed slaves, and for whom Christian charity had spread an ample repast. ”

“ The fact was recognized by President Lincoln in his last [Pg 44] appeal to the loyal Slave States to consummate emancipation.
Another noticeable act of our Government in behalf of Liberty is the official provision it makes for the wants of the thousands of helpless human beings thus thrown upon our care. Taxed with the burden of an immense war, with the care of thousands of sick and wounded, the United States Government has cheerfully voted rations for helpless slaves, no less than wages to the helpful ones. ”

“ We do not shut our eyes to the difficulties, nay, the dangers, that might beset the immediate abolition of that long-established system. We see and admit the necessity of preparation for so great an event; but, in speaking of indispensable preliminaries, we cannot be silent on those laws of your country which, in direct contravention of God’s own law, ‘instituted in the time of [Pg 5] man’s innocency,’ deny in effect to the Slave the sanctity of marriage, with all its joys, rights, and obligations ”

“ Last, not least, the new Constitution has put at rest for ever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution,—African Slavery as it exists among us, the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. ”

“ Slavery ruins land, and requires fresh territory for profitable working. Slavery increases a dangerous population, and requires an expansion of this population for safety. Slavery, then, being hemmed in by impassable limits, emancipation in each State becomes a necessity. ”

“ The United States Government pays teachers to instruct them, and overseers to guide their industrial efforts. A free-labour experiment is already in successful operation among the beautiful sea-islands in the neighbourhood of Beaufort, which, even under most disadvantageous circumstances, is fast demonstrating how much more efficiently men will work from hope and liberty than from fear and constraint. ”

“ Your address reached us just as a great moral conflict was coming to its intensest point.
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The agitation kept up by the anti-slavery portion of America, by England, and by the general sentiment of humanity in Europe, had made the situation of the slaveholding aristocracy intolerable. As one of them at the time expressed it, they felt themselves under the ban of the civilized world. ”

“ They met and organized a Confederacy which they openly declared to be the first republic founded on the right and determination of the white man to enslave the black man; and, spreading their banners, declared themselves to the Christian world of the nineteenth century as a nation organized with the full purpose and intent of perpetuating slavery. ”

“ Those waters surely never echoed with such sounds before.
“Our steamer left Beaufort without a soldier, and returned, after an absence of twelve days, with one hundred and fifty-six fighting coloured men, some of whom dropped the hoe, took a musket, and were at once soldiers, ready to fight for the freedom of others.”
It is conceded on all sides, that, wherever our armies have had occupancy, there slavery has been practically abolished. ”

“ The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to His laws and decrees in the formation of government as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded on a strict conformity with those laws. ”

“ Why is the general voice of our press, the general sentiment of our people bitterly reproachful to the North, while for the South, the aggressors in the war, we have either mild apologies or direct and downright encouragement,—and this not only from the Tory and anti-Democratic camp, but from Liberals, or soi-disant such? ”

“ Events of no ordinary interest have just occurred in the Department of the South. The negro troops have been tested, and, to their great joy, though not contrary to their own expectations, they have triumphed, not only over enemies armed with muskets and [Pg 30] swords, but over what the black man dreads most, sharp and cruel prejudices.
“General Saxton, on the 28th of October, sent the captured steamer Darlington, Captain Crandell, down the coast of Georgia, and to Fernandina, Florida, to obtain recruits for the First Regiment South-Carolina Volunteers. ”