William Aikman

“ To lift twelve millions of men to a new better place, to open before them a good and happy future, instead of certain prospective woe and final dissolution, is a work worth the tears and groans of a nation, and they can well afford to be patient till the time has come. At present let not one's heart fail him if the horizon grows dark and hope seems at times blotted out; let him remember well what the meaning of the strife is, that it is no accident, but the death-struggle of a civilization two hundred years old, and based on all the worst and strongest elements of human nature. ”

“ The colored race is here, here for a long time it will remain; it will not—the events bewildering us by their rapid march all point one way—it will not remain in slavery; it will and must by-and-by be free. We, as an American people, must accept this double truth with all its difficulties and perplexities; we must like men, in God's fear and with many a cry for his help, bravely deal with it. We need not now go back and stand sighing over the past, and mourning that we did not a century ago meet it and escape the mighty work and sorrow of to-day ”

“ Slavery has created an aristocracy, not of numbers, but of wealth and power, which bears with all the social forces. While the slave-holder are but a very small minority of the whole people, yet by the force of their wealth and the fact of their being slave owners, they hold all the political power, and indeed, sweep out of existence any opposition. There are, with very rare exceptions throughout the whole South, but two classes—free and slave, or we may say, slave-holders and slaves, for the non slave-holders are completely lost and absorbed in the all-controlling element which is above them ”

“ If the simple economic law of supply and demand, as powerful over men as materials, were not sufficient to keep this people where they are needed, and to prevent them from going where they are not, the love of home would be strong enough to bar such result. The slave needs all the mighty stimulus of a prospective deliverance from slavery to induce him to leave the place of his birth, and that even is often enough; why, then, when he has that boon in his hand, and walks the old haunts a freeman, with work requited and enough, why should he now go away to strangers and strange land? ”

“ He, then who does not take slavery into the account in his thinking on this war, has not begun to get a glimpse of what it means; he who leaves it out in the settlement of it, will not advance a step. Its origin was in slavery, its issue is to be found only as it is connected with slavery. There may be, as there has been, through the tremendous power of a vast prejudice, a thousand endeavours to avoid the issue, but events will sooner or later compel every man, whether he will or not, to look it in the face. ”

“ The early history of nations which have a history, usually begins with the coming of a colony, whether it be Phoenician, Cadmean, or Trojan. "Religion, law and letters are not indigenous, but exotic; in all the past career of man upon the globe one race hands the torch of science to another." Of no people must this be more true than of the African. If Africa is to be elevated, it must be by the infusion of life and power from without, and by means of colonies which bring with them the elements of life and power.
The colonist who brings this boon to Africa must be an African. ”

“ The best tribes are not, in the nature of things, those out of which slaves are made. The bolder, more energetic and intelligent are those who make slaves. War and conquest are the fruitful sources of slavery; they have been in all age, in every country, and are so today in Africa. But the abler tribes are the warriors and the conquerors, while the weaker and the lower are the captives. Thus at the outset the slave declares by the fact of his servitude his inferiority of lineage. ”

“ While we give expression to these thoughts, let us not be understood as affirming that the benefits of which we speak are the legitimate results of slavery. Nothing could be farther from our intention. To substitute a cause for an occasion is a very common error: indeed some minds seem incapable of fully apprehending the world-wide difference. The legitimate effect of slavery is to thrust the victim as far down in the scale of being as is possible. The nearer the brute, the better the slave , is the true law of slavery. Slavery is the cause of ignorance, degradation, and crime. ”

“ The people have not yet begun to understand all its great meaning. What is it? It is that the government of these United States deems slavery an evil, wishes it to cease , and will do what it can to help it to an end. It is the first time in all our history that this was true. The government has never so spoken before. Henceforth its policy is to help emancipation . It is a risen sun, it has brought a day whose glorious light we have not yet appreciated. Hereafter all its patronage, and power, and prestige will be thrown on the side of freedom, and no man can accurately measure the result. ”

“ Among them in this country a pure-blooded negro will, with biting sarcasm, taunt the mulatto with the fact that the blood of another race is in his veins.
This feeling, which must have been noticed by any one whose observation has been extensive or intelligent enough to collect the facts, leads the race to remain by itself; and when left to its natural course, such is the result. The statistics of this country show that the free black does not and cannot mingle with the white race. No elevation or freedom can produce such an intermixture. ”

“ With slavery out of the way, the black will naturally bend his steps to the region where climate, congenial employments, habits, associations, all welcome him; he will go away from a people who do not understand him, and whose prejudices keep him down, to be near a people who have grown up with him, who know him, and are better able to do him good. This consolidation of the race in one part of the land will have an important bearing on its future. Emancipation only will fully accomplish it. ”

“ This civilization, whose basis is slavery, has chosen to risk its existence on the issue of the war: it must accept the alternative which it has raised, and be content to pass away.
The war will decide the question of slavery, and with it alter the whole form of society at the South which rests upon it. But one civilization cannot pass away and leave a vacuum; one state of society cannot cease and have no other in its palace. It is only changes, not new creations which take place in the social world; one civilization gives place to another; society passes from one state into another . ”

“ The effect of emancipating one's slaves upon the social position of the master, has been seen over and over again; the hour when the bonds are broken and freedom is given is the hour when all the former associations are given up; expatriation and banishment are the inevitable results. The generous, or the conscientious emancipator at once becomes an exile; he has sunk at once out of an aristocracy whose titular power he gave up the moment he ceased to be a slave-holder, and he cannot comfortably abide in even his old home. ”

“ In whatever way the present civil war in America shall result, it is certain that the future condition of the colored race in this country will be the question over-mastering all others for many years to come. It has already pushed itself into the foremost place. However it may be true, that slavery and the negro were not the proximate causes of this war, no one who gives any candid thought to the matter can fail to recognize the fact, that back of all, this stands as the grand first occasion of it. Had there been no slavery, there would have been no war. ”

“ Is it difficult to predict the future of such a people? Is it certainly absurd to say that there is a history before it, if not of the highest style, yet one good and even excellent; if not the noblest, as aggressive in its good upon the world, yet one sufficiently glorious for itself? ”

“ No scheme of deportation or colonization shall open any easy door of escape; let no man console himself that the question of emancipation is to be solved by any such short and simple process; here on this continent, within the borders of these States, slavery has done its work, and just here freedom is to have her greatest and most glorious triumph. ”

“ Here are four millions of Christians. We mean, of course, Christian in contradistinction from any other form of religious belief. Before this one fact we may stand in silent wonder and admiration at the processes of God's great providence. If any where on earth the night of heathenism is dark, and the darkness is palpable, it is in the negro's native home. Yet here are millions of the same race maintaining their peculiar characteristics with great distinctness, yet in all essential points a Christian people, infinitely above their brethren in their original seat. ”

“ The inferiority of a race can hardly be shown to be a valid reason for its banishment from the presence of the superior, and by its power; the inability of a people to care for or to elevate themselves, does not seem a precisely good argument for sending them to a new land, and to a naked dependence on their own resources; the invincible prejudice of the white does not at once give a very potent, at least a very just reason why the black should be expatriated. ”

“ The Hebrew bondage is the example illustrating it. Whatever may be said in respect to the right of the negro to a perpetual home here, and we would be the last to dispute it; whatever may be urged against the prejudice which thrusts them out of association and into painful separation, and we would not for an instant justify it; yet still we are of the opinion that here the negro will not abide as a people. Social equality and the enjoyment of every right are well nigh hopeless for him. Were there nothing else in the way, the stigma of slavery is almost perpetual and ineradicable. ”

“ Strangely enough, one of the marked effects of the residence of the black in this country has been to give a new and foreign element to the mental and physical structure of the negro. It has created an admixture of blood with a superior race. The natural effect of slavery has been to infuse the best blood of the master in the veins of the slave. This fact has not, perhaps, received the attention which it deserves as having an influence upon the future of the negro race. ”

“ Events crowding upon each other with a rapidity which bewilders us, seem steadily and swiftly bringing the freedom of the negro to its accomplishments. No man is competent to say what the issue will be, or to what new form the events will shape themselves. A little while ago the most common consent of men looked toward a gradual emancipation, to-day it seems more and more as if the fetters were to be stricken off at a blow. ”

“ Here is the explanation of the vast and unexpected power put forth by this rebellion, of the unconquered will, of the enormous sacrifices endured; here is the explanation of the seeming insanity of the struggle, of the unwarrantableness of its acts, of the demoniac fierceness of its rage, and the diabolical malignity and cruelty of its method of war; it is the death struggle of a great social element, for which to be conquered is to be ruined and swept out of existence. ”

“ Here the whole philosophy of the social state of the South is in a nut-shell. To abandon slavery is to abandon a position which has been held as a tenure of nobility for two hundred years. Nothing but the direst necessity will bring it about. It will never be given voluntarily up; the whole force of human nature is against it relinquishment. ”

“ Slavery is the source of amalgamation. The mulatto and the quadroon tell you unerringly of a present or a former servitude.
With this pliant ductility and this permanence of race, there is another striking characteristic;—the negro's attachment to place. It is probably a natural trait, but from easily perceived causes it is perhaps intensified in the case of the American negro. He loves his home and seldom goes willingly away from it, whether slave or free. The number of fugitives from bondage would be prodigiously multiplied were this feeling more easily overcome. ”