Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

“ Is our grand Republic, its destiny, its administration, its policy, to be forever floating hither and thither upon the uncertain billows of this beautiful but dangerous sea of political metaphysics? Are these gentlemen prepared to say that every institution of society must stand or fall, according as it conforms, or fails to conform, to some principle of natural right, deduced by each generation from natural reason? Where, sir, would such a principle stop? ”

“ Is it strange, sir, that our people should think of withdrawing their imperiled institutions from the sweep of this fanatical revolution? And yet, sir, if a southern gentleman, from a heart oppressed with gloomy forebodings for his country, expresses any such sentiment upon this floor, forthwith these Republican gentlemen — ay, sir, and grave Senator's — seize upon it, tear it from its context, misrepresent the spirit which prompted its utterance, and send it forth grouped with other expressions similarly garbled, to arouse passion, inflame prejudice, and madden fanaticism. ”

“ Each one of these three hundred and twenty thousand slaveholders has one vote, and no more. Each one of the five million non-slaveholders has one vote, and no less. These latter, then, have the overwhelming majority. Sir, the institution is in the hollow of the hand of the non-slaveholder of the South. He has but to close his hand, and the institution is crushed. He sees its effects on the slave; he feels its effects on himself. ”

“ What, though he is often compelled to toil in midday while the very earth is melting with fervent heat, and while the negro slave is resting from his work, still his labor is dignified and honorable, because it is free; and although commerce may languish, and manufactures go into decay, and the wages of labor fall, and the price of provisions increase, yet he can hush the mutterings of discontent and still the gnawings of hunger by the one proud, glorious thought — the dignity of labor. ”

“ The gentleman from Connecticut, following that line of argument, asks: "Is there a man upon this floor who would not rather die than be a bondman? who would not rather see his little son dead in his coffin than see that son sold into slavery?"
Well, sir, I answer the gentleman, (and I presume it is just as he wishes me to answer,) that I cannot be rightfully reduced to slavery; nor can you, sir; nor can the gentleman himself. But, sir, does it follow that men are right-angled triangles — that whatever is true of one is predicable of all men? ”

“ And this is the ground upon which we of the South place our cherished institutions. We maintain that these justifying circumstances do exist in relation to our institution of negro slavery. They consist in the unfitness of the black race for a condition higher than that of slavery. Our proposition is, that when these two races are brought into contact, the supremacy of the white man must be acknowledged, and his right to govern both races with reference to the happiness of both. This is the principle upon which, until recently, the legislation of all your northern States was founded. ”

“ What you call "operatives" have to share the profits of their labor with capital, and it is hinted that capital gets the lion's share. What we call "slaves" are owned by capital, and get their return only in food, raiment, shelter, and protecting care. But, sir, true free labor is that which the southern farmer, with his own free arm, applies to his own soil, allowing neither master, capitalist, nor employer, to have any participation in its profits. And, sir, what are those profits? Not alone the crop of cotton, corn, and potatoes ”

“ If, then, we show that the condition of the negro at the South is superior to his condition in any other country, and that the abolition of slavery has always been followed by immediate retrogression, I ask of what has humanity to complain against the institution?
Sir, another argument that has been advanced by northern gentlemen, and by the leader of their party is, that the interests of the white race require the exclusion of this institution from new territory; that it should be dedicated to free soil, and to the freemen of the North. ”

“ The southern people demand that this organized "irrepressible conflict" shall stop— that the institution of slavery shall be maintained as an existing fact in this Confederacy. The sentiment is rapidly approaching to unanimity among them, that any attempt to impair its property- value, or a single political privilege which it confers, or any of the constitutional rights by which it is guarantied, or to place over them the party which arrogates to itself the right to do any of these things, will be a fatal blow at the peace and stability of this great country. ”

“ Without local attachment, without national honor, we shall resemble a swarm of insects that settle on the fruits of the earth to corrupt and consume them, rather than men who love and cleave to the land of their forefathers. ”

“ One thing I will say, that the census returns show that his moral and physical condition is superior in the South to what it is in the North. And if freedom to the individual be such a boon and blessing to the African, southern slavery has done more in this respect for the race than Northern abolitionism. There have been one hundred thousand more emancipated by the southern States than have been emancipated by the northern States; and there are forty thousand free negroes living in the South now more than are resident in the northern States. ”

“ Their existence is ignored by the laws of some States, and their very persons, in many instances, are subject to the custody of coarser and inferior natures. And these gentlemen justify all this, not upon the ground that woman's nature is not immortal, or that her rights are less inherent and inalienable, but simply because the necessities of society demand her consecration to those high and noble responsibilities which unfit her for the exercise of political rights. ”

“ I think that an honest, intelligent laboring man is as much entitled to a participation in the government as the member of any other class of society.
But there are certain moral advantages in favor of a land-owning community. Sir, in every country, and in every age, the proprietorship of the soil has been regarded as a position of dignity and of personal elevation. ”

“ Now, I put the question, and I want it answered, whether female dependence or the immaturity of youth constitute any better reason for the privation of political and social equality, for the infliction of civil disabilities and personal restraints, than the ignorance, superstition, the mental and moral debasement which centuries of barbarism have entailed upon a servile race? I want to know, sir, if the good of society, its interests and order, as a whole, require that this race should be retained in its existing relation ”

“ But she is prosperous; and the heart of her people beats truer to the Union than to their own tranquillity. Nor will she be driven from her devotion, except by causes which she has not created, and by consequences for which she is not responsible. Mississippi has never declared herself in favor of disunion, per se. She will not make that declaration until she becomes convinced that her sister States north are deliberately determined to endanger her internal and social institutions, or to impair her dignity and equality as a confederate State. ”

“ I see in this country a great manufacturing population drawing the materials of manufacture from a limited market. I see a great cotton trade carried on, which furnishes nearly two million people with food, clothes, and firing; and I say that, if you shut out slave-grown cotton, you would produce a mass ol misery among the people whom Providence has committed to your charge, frightful to contemplate ”

“ Sir, England has imported Coolies, Chinese, natives from the African coast, into her colonies, and yet she has been unable to compete with the southern plantations. There is no product which requires such a constant and unremitting attention, such continuous labor, as the cotton plant. The great complaint in the British colonies is, that the fruit of each year's effort is lost by the broken and irregular labor of the operatives. ”

“ LAMAR. Sir, the gentleman said that the sentiment of all Christendom was repugnant to the institution of slavery. Christianity came into the world when the relation of master and slave was one of cruelty and hostility. "Our slaves are our enemies," was the observation of the elder Cato. ”

“ Mississippi, sir, has grown up under this Federal Union. There is not, within her limits, a proprietor who does not hold his home under a grant from the Federal Government. Her noble university, and her common schools, are all established by donations from the public domain, which she has received, in common with all the new States. ”

“ The most humane explorers of the African continent tell us that they exist there without social or political order, without modesty or shame, some of the tribes not even reaching the civilization of the fig-leaf.
I propose, just here, to read from Hegel's Philosophy of History, an imperishable monument of human genius, in which the author holds "freedom to be the essence of humanity, and slavery the condition of injustice." And what does he say?
"The negro, as already observed, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. ”

“ I have sought, sir, in a cursory way, under the whip and spur of this hour rule, to show that there is nothing in our institutions which cannot stand justified before impartial history for our mode of dealing with the race which Providence has placed in our hands. ”

“ Webster, in one of his speeches, spoke of the ownership of land as constituting the basis of free government, and said that suffrage should be restricted to those whose property gave them an interest in the preservation of the State. ”

“ The habits of industry, firmness of purpose, fidelity to dependents, self-reliance, and the sentiment of justice in all the various relations of life which are necessary to the management of a well-ordered plantation, fit men to guide legislatures and command armies. ”

“ It is true, that in the special and appreciable advantages of Federal legislation — such as discriminations in favor of industrial pursuits, and commercial enterprise, and the returns of taxation, in the form of Government expenditures — she receives far less than an average share. She has no ships to participate in the monopoly granted to American vessels of the coasting trade, and the benefit of tonnage duties in their favor in the foreign trade. Her population have no fishing or other bounties from the national Treasury ”

“ The undervaluing of humanity among them reaches an incredible degree of intensity. Tyranny is regarded as no wrong, and cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary and proper.... The devouring of human flesh is altogether consonant with the general principles of the African race. To the sensual negro, human flesh is but an object of sense, mere flesh. ”

“ In the communion with himself — which his isolation makes indispensable — and in the daily and yearly provision for a large body of domestics and dependents for whom he has to think, and whose labor he has to direct, he forms those qualities which enable him to emerge from his isolation to fill the county court, or to become a member of his State Legislature, to discharge the duties of local magistracy, or to take his place in the national councils. ”

“ It was in such communities that such men as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Polk, Lowndes, Calhoun, Clay, Macon, Marshall, Taney, and a host of others that I could mention, acquired those characteristics which their countrymen North and South instinctively discerned whenever "called upon to face some awful moment to which Heaven has joined great issues, good or bad, for human kind." ”

“ It is these qualities which have enabled him to take a race of untamed savages, with no habits except such as inspire disgust, with no arts, no information, and out of such a people to make the finest body of fixed laborers that the world has ever seen. ”

“ We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality, all that we call feeling, if we would rightly comprehend him. There is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character." (Page 97.) ”

“ They are bound to obedience, fidelity, submission, and respect to their masters, not only to the good and kind, but also to the unkind and forward; not, however, on the ground of duty to man, but on the ground of duty to God. ”

“ But I do say that there is a reach of thought and a maturity of judgment brought to bear upon this subject in the South which is always adequate to evolve the greatest good. We certainly can learn nothing from the enemies of our institutions and conspirators against our peace. ”