Mrs. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

“ Slavery or freedom for the slaves is not an open question under the present Constitution of these United States. The North must deliver to us our fugitives from labor, or must be guilty of treason against the known laws of the country. The Southern men entered this confederacy with their slaves. And so long as this Union is to hold together, so long the North has no right to decide for us, whether slavery or unlicensed freedom is best for our poor, ignorant, dependent slaves. ”

“ Webster's manner on the momentous occasion when he delivered this great speech, was that of a man who fully comprehended the solemnity of his attitude as a national peace-maker, and had also fully counted the cost of offending perhaps his political constituents at the North. But that healthy appreciation of truth that has always commanded a perfect mastery over his intellect, and that unfeigned love of his country that has grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength, seemed to have chased out of his mind and heart every thought of self. ”

“ The Southern men are educated as planters, not manufacturers, or merchants; and, consequently, if our slaves are taken from us, we are sunk in poverty. A white man cannot bear the scorching sun of the South, like the African who luxuriates in the heat of our climate, and dies when he is subjected to the cold of the North. Even the mulatto cannot bear the heat of our cotton-fields. Consequently, if the slaves were given their freedom, the cotton that supplies the whole North would cease to be grown; for none but our black people can raise it ”

“ In Grahamville, South Carolina, where the slaves are so numerous, they have said to me, over and again, "We do not like that Northern parson; we see he despises us in his heart, and his manners are so cold and unsympathizing, and so exacting towards us, that we cannot talk to him about our souls, with the freedom we do to our own ministers, who own slaves themselves, and therefore know how to feel for us." ”

“ Poor slave! you once had a master, whose interest and whose humanity protected you, and supplied your every want; who kept you from idleness and drunkenness, and from the indulgence of crime and fiendish passions; but, like a wayward child, you have fled from your best, your most sympathizing friend, and sought refuge from salutary restraints among the Pharisaical abolitionists, who should be classed with those men whom the Saviour addressed "as compassing sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him two-fold more the child of hell than yourselves." ”

“ I have become exceedingly mellowed in my theories about the dignity of human nature, and I feel peculiarly sympathetic towards all the beforementioned delinquents. Still, I cannot, no, I cannot find any apology for the abolitionists, who seem to set at defiance, not only the letter, but the spirit of God's holy law, are traitors to their own noble country, and appear determined, as far as their influence goes, to blot out of existence this far-famed Republic, by schism in the body politic, that will rend it to pieces, after first deluging the States in blood. ”

“ My brother, you will not suspect me of treachery, when I assure you that South Carolina is utterly mistaken in imagining that the respectable and dignified men of the North are abolitionists. Look at the self-sacrificing, the almost godlike patriotism of Webster's attitude, when he stood up firmly against his own Northern prejudices and the seeming threats of his own constituents, and boldly argued in the defence of our rights under the Constitution as slaveholders. ”

“ Self-love is an undying passion; and so long, therefore, as this principle governs the human heart, the abolitionist may cease his absurd commiseration of the Southern slave. We may, as these Pharisees profess to believe, be divested of every noble social virtue; but we have still remaining too much of the Yankee in us, to hurt our own property, by cruelty or hard work, or any tyrannical oppressions that destroy the health or curtail the lives of our slaves. ”

“ The black man can never rise to any equality whatsoever with any other foreigner that emigrates to the North. And the Free States are beginning to enact laws, to drive the colored people out from among them. They say, "They are a nuisance, a perfect incubus;" that all foreigners can do something; useful in manufacture or the arts, or in agriculture, which will advance the country that nestles them in its arms; but the free black man is too lazy, too unenterprising, or, what is much more true, too degraded a caste, to be allowed to compete with the white laborer. ”

“ But a truce, my brother, to these reflections, that stir up the depths of my heart, as a warm friend of the slave; and let me here assure you, that the very last elections in the North prove that the abstraction called abolitionism is so absurd, that it cannot any longer be used even as a political hobby. Free-soilism, which is much more popular, as a political step-ladder, has no basis more elevated. ”

“ Can any real lover of his country wish to see any part of the United States thus impoverished, by giving the negroes up to the only freedom which their degraded minds crave? Which is freedom from labor, and freedom to indulge their criminal passions? ”

“ And this home of the oppressed of all nations will then become a hissing and a by-word to the whole world.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." But I promised to reveal to you the condition of the degraded class of fugitive slaves and colored people in the Northern cities; and, after your heart has been wrung by their awful destitution, I desire you to tell me if such misery was ever heard of, or ever could by any possibility be experienced by any of our slaves in South Carolina. ”

“ Such then, my brother, is the condition of the degraded portion of the negroes in Philadelphia. Can you be surprised, then, that I assert, that I can feel sympathy for a great many classes of sinners; but for the abolitionist, the faithless, heartless, wicked smuggler of our slaves, who holds out the word of promise to the ear, and breaks it to the hope; who entices him from his master and his home; who harbors and conceals him from the law, when he commits murder and treason, and indulges in other diabolical passions ”

“ I do earnestly wish that our Southern members could see through the object of demagogues, in encouraging these furious debates in Congress. For a dignified or contemptuous silence on our part, would put a stop to the quarreling and to the vainglorious taunting speeches, that are used as the stepping-stones to high offices, by these heartless politicians. There are nearly twenty-five millions of people in the U. S., and it would be absurd stupidity in us to expect they could exist without seeking some element for strife, or envy against each other. ”

“ I say, not only has the Massachusetts statesman, whose mental strength is an avalanche of crushing capacity, volunteered his influence in defence of our rights under the Constitution, but the most gifted of our Northern brethren generally, have poured out the fires of their eloquence in this patriotic cause throughout the Northern cities, making stump speeches, and urging the people, by every instinct of love to their noble country, to cease the suicidal effort to goad the Southern States into withdrawing from this incomparable Union. ”

“ There are no professional black gentlemen there, and very few who are even mechanics. The industrious, respectable negro, in Philadelphia, accumulates the same comforts, and performs, almost universally, the same menial work that he does in Charleston, South Carolina; that is, he carries "bricks and mortar," and waits on white people as a servant, in private houses or hotels; while the lazy and immoral, who are the slaves of their own degraded natures, and have no kind masters to feed and clothe them, and control their brutishness, die like dogs, without any of the necessaries of life. ”

“ Coates, to let you see what are the real opinions of thinking men and physicians at the North, about the developments, physical and mental, of the black race, and then to express my unfeigned astonishment that, with such facts staring them in the face, any persons could be found so malignant and fanatical as to inveigle the colored people from their happy home, in the warm sunny South, to come to the North to gain suicidal freedom. ”

“ We never even can be made to believe, that their pretended love of universal freedom, is not mere canting hypocrisy, until they themselves do what they require us to do; that is, give up all their property. Yes, sell all their merchandize, and deliver up all their bank stock, and every cent they own, to the cause of liberty; the Quixotic cause of freeing our slaves. ”

“ How thankful I am to God, that the slave, who seems given up to the will of his master, should have the very strongest passion of that master's heart enlisted to protect him and provide for his every want. ”

“ My heart burns with indignant feeling when I see that the poor foolish negro is seduced from his master, and brought to our Northern cities, or smuggled into Canada, where he is alike despised and deserted, and left to famish, or exist in a place so small and filthy that our cows could not survive a winter in them. I have obtained a statistical pamphlet, printed by highly respectable gentlemen in Philadelphia, that reveals the hopeless desolation, and the agonizing sufferings, of the miserable, degraded classes of negroes in that city. ”

“ The master and his people are so identified, that if a white man molests your slave, you are instantly insulted; and you frequently quarrel with and even fight him, as quickly as you would resent a wrong done to your child; and any master, who is known to be cruel or unkind, is perfectly despised by public opinion. ”

“ Believe me, my brother, the abolitionists are as hateful to the dignified statesmen at the North, as they are, or ever can be, to those at the South. In all my journeyings at the North, and in all my arguments with Northern men, I have never met a single gentleman, who would own himself an abolitionist. ”

“ This is sometimes true; but we sell them to a master whose self-interest is just as much concerned as our own, to treat him kindly. It is a base falsehood that is fulminated against us, that we separate a mother from her little children, when we sell them. And it is equally false, that the master locks up all of his slaves every night, and arms himself with swords and guns, to protect himself, for fear of their nocturnal treacherous designs. So far from it, the master regards his slaves the best friends he has on earth. These and numerous other absurdities are believed by the abolitionists. ”

“ Calhoun, just before he died, remarked, "that although Webster had been his political opponent all his life, he had always been forced to approve in him, one striking moral peculiarity, namely, that he could not speak with power on any subject, if that subject did not command the entire consent of his intellectual judgment that it was right and true." Would to God that all our versatile statesmen and orators were alike incapacitated to argue without conviction of the truth of their theme! ”

“ If a master by cruelty or oppression hurts his slave, he hurts himself in his pecuniary interests, he hurts himself in public opinion (that, in chivalrous South Carolina, regards a man a mean, cowardly wretch, who could be brutal or unkind to those who are utterly dependent on him) , and he hurts himself in his conscience, which is educated to believe that the wrath of God will fall without mercy on the oppressor. ”

“ My only argument with any persons who have heard and believed such monstrosities about us is, that the slaveholders may be destitute, as the abolitionists would fain believe, of every benevolent virtue, but they certainly are not divested of their love of self; and, therefore, they could not hurt or be cruel to a single one of their slaves, who, if he died, would be a loss to them of six, seven, eight, nine, or ten hundred dollars. ”

“ The Southern gentlemen, who are generally planters, are rich, and lordly in their feelings. They labor severely with their brain, but not with their hands, to conduct their large establishments; and this sort of aristocratic life is hateful to some classes at the North, and they, therefore, from a natural feeling of envy, strive to impoverish us by the abolition of slavery. There may be a few, who are sincerely deluded, and have benevolent instincts in their efforts to free our slaves ”

“ Union of interest and of feeling, among a dense population, can only be expected when we all have learned to " love God with all our hearts, and our neighbors as ourselves." Suppose the North, from their majority of votes, does prevent us from carrying our slaves to California, or Oregon. This will not hurt us, as the present area of slavery is so large already in the United States, that we can scarcely conceive of a time, when we would not have abundant room to operate with our slaves. ”

“ That to urge a slave to suspect, to hate, to fly from, and to murder the master, who has reared him up from infancy; who has given him everything necessary to life or godliness; who has protected him from every foe, even the foes of his own lazy and evil nature ”

“ And I am very sure, that the spirit of vain-glory, the desire to do some great thing, that induces the abolitionist to harden his heart against the miserable starving white emigrants, that surround his door in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and then to expend his sensibility on our fat, healthy, happy slaves in the far off South, is a species of monomania, that is inherent in ambitious, but weak, unbalanced minds. ”

“ I myself have studied the selfishness of the human heart, until I believe there is greater security in its being the self-interest of our friends, to cherish and take care of us, than perhaps from any other motive. A man may cease to love his wife, his father, his mother, his sisters, his brothers ”

“ The devil is the father of lies, and no doubt especially claims as his offspring the fabricators of such diabolical perversions of truth. I have spent my whole life in South Carolina, in the midst of numerous plantations of slaves, and yet I do here in the presence of God assert, that I never saw, never heard, never even conceived of anything approaching to the tyranny above described, and generated only in the fiendish fancies of those whose cause needs such props of lies. ”