Orange Free State

“ In the Orange Free State every man and woman; in the Transvaal, every man is compelled to carry a pass, without which he can leave neither his home nor the farm upon which he is engaged, for any purpose whatever. ”

“ We yield to no one in our devotion to liberty or in our readiness to defend the rights of the citizen. We have no sympathy with the rioters of the Twelfth of July and not one word to offer in their defence. They broke both the law of the church and the law of the land, sinned against God, and committed a crime against the state. But we venture to deny that the police order forbidding the Orange procession infringed the liberty of any citizen or deprived the Orangemen of any right they had or could have on American soil. ”

“ No, no; the press has taken only a one-sided view in calling the prohibition of the Orange procession a violation of freedom and a cowardly yielding to Irish or Catholic dictation. It was no such thing. The Orangemen had no right on their side, and were entitled to no protection. Liberty was on the other side, and its vindication and the right of asylum required us as Americans to protect the victims of the Orange party who had sought refuge with us from Orange insult and outrage on our own soil. ”

“ Let the asperities growing out of the controversy die with the controversy. All I ask is, that in future we recognize the right of the people of a Territory to form a Free State, or a Slave State, as they may choose, and come into the Union on an equality with the other States. ”

“ From an address put forth by the colonists of Liberia to the free people of color of the United States, we make a few extracts:
"The first consideration which caused our voluntary removal to this country, and the object which we still regard with the deepest concern, is liberty — liberty in the sober, simple, but complete sense of the word; not a licentious liberty, nor a liberty without government, or which should place us without the restraint of salutary laws; but that liberty of speech and conscience which distinguishes the free enfranchised citizens of a free state. ”

“ In all this world, but one spot offers, what you would desire. No where else, but in Liberia, does the man of color live under a free Government of his own organization and administration. Go where else you will, and um but partially relieve yourself from the disabilities under which you now labor. In the free States of the North, you meet a stronger prejudice against your color then here, and in many places with a legislation depriving you of many kinds of labor, at present open to you. ”

“ Liberia offers, as its greatest gift, a free country. Our own race there are in power and in honor. You have heard of it, we know, and therefore prize it. We are a free and independent State, having a Constitution and Bill of Rights, like that of the United States. We do our own voting, while you, in most of this country, do not. ”

“ We are not only in favor of keeping slavery out of the territories, but, carrying our opposition to the institution a step further, [Pg 26] we here unhesitatingly declare ourself in favor of its immediate and unconditional abolition, in every state in this confederacy, where it now exists! Patriotism makes us a freesoiler; state pride makes us an emancipationist; a profound sense of duty to the South makes us an abolitionist; a reasonable degree of fellow feeling for the negro, makes us a colonizationist. With the free state men in Kanzas and Nebraska, we sympathize with all our heart. ”

“ Resolved, That if, in the opinion of government, our stay or liberty can no longer be granted in the States in which we live, we see nothing contrary to the constitution of these United States, or to christianity, justice, reason or humanity, in granting us a portion of the Western territory, as a state, with the same franchise as that of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or any other free State; for we challenge the Union to prove that, as free men, we have ever given the least ground for the uncharitable censures that have been cast upon us. ”

“ It is not all this alone which makes it unlikely that the Southern planter should desire to free his slaves: freedom in America is not merely a personal right, it involves a political privilege. Freemen there are legislators. The rulers of the land are the majority of the people, and in many parts of the Southern States the black free citizens would become, if not at once, yet in process of time, inevitably voters, landholders, delegates to state legislatures, members of assembly—who knows?—senators, judges, aspirants to the presidency of the United States. ”

“ Here is a victory, moral and political: moral, inasmuch as Freedom secures a new foothold where to exert her far-reaching influence; political, inasmuch as by the admission of California, the Free States obtain a majority of votes in the Senate, thus overturning that balance of power between Freedom and Slavery, so preposterously claimed by the Slave States, in forgetfulness of the true spirit of the Constitution, and in mockery of Human Rights. [Cheers.] May free California, and her Senators in Congress, amidst the trials before us, never fail in loyalty to Freedom! ”

“ There are thirty-one States in the Union; let them drop California, or any other new free State, and then institute fifteen comparisons, first comparing New-York with Virginia, Pennsylvania with Carolina, Massachusetts with Georgia, and so on, until they have exhausted the catalogue. Then, for once, let them be bold enough to listen to the admonitions of their own souls, and if they do not soon start to their feet demanding the abolition of slavery, it will only be because they have reasons for suppressing their inmost sentiments. ”

“ There is no longer any doubt but the issue will here- after be narrowed down to slavery and anti-slavery. The Black Republicans will rally under the banner of Free State and Free Soil in Oregon and the pro-slavery party under the Consti- tution and the measures to perpetuate the Union. ”

“ If, then, all the people in each State, were, by virtue of the 13th Amendment, free, what right had a majority to enslave a minority? What right had a majority to make any distinctions between free men? What right had a majority to take from a minority any privilege, or any immunity, to which they were entitled as free men? What right had the majority to make that unequal which the Constitution made equal? ”

“ The Southerner's complaint, that he is accustomed to the institution of slavery, is fairly met by the Northerner's retort, that he is accustomed to the institution of freedom.
Now, which voice shall prevail? Neither party has any more right than the other; and neither party has any right at all. The Territories are in a state of wardship; and Congress is to decide as it thinks best for their welfare, present and future; and if Congress thinks that a nation prospers with free institutions and droops under slavery, then let Congress admit the Territory as a Free State. ”

“ The passing of a great human institution before its work is done, like the untimely passing of a single soul, but leaves a legacy of striving for other men. The legacy of the Freedmen's Bureau is the heavy heritage of this generation. Today, when new and vaster problems are destined to strain every fibre of the national mind and soul, would it not be well to count this legacy honestly and carefully? For this much all men know: despite compromise, struggle, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free. ”

“ Many, Republicans as well as Democrats, were for repealing the Personal Liberty Laws, and for the admission of New Mexico as a State, with or without slavery, for the enforcement of the Fugitive State Law, for suppressing the right of free speech and the freedom of the press on the subject of slavery, and for surrendering the Northern position in opposition to the extension of slavery to national Territories, in order to placate the South and keep it in the Union. ”

“ They readily enough admit that the Government has made him free, but appear to believe that they still have the right to exercise over him the old control. It is partly their misfortune, and not wholly their fault, that they cannot understand the national intent, as expressed in the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitutional Amendment. I did not anywhere find a man who could see that laws should be applicable to all persons alike; and hence even the best men hold that each State must have a negro code. ”

“ I stated above that I did not deem a negro insurrection probable as long as the freedmen were assured of the direct protection of the National Government. Whenever they are in trouble, they raise their eyes up to that power, and although they may suffer, yet, as long as that power is visibly present, they continue to hope. But when State authority in the South is fully restored, the Federal forces withdrawn and the Freedmen's Bureau abolished, the colored man will find himself turned over to the mercies of those whom he does not trust. ”

“ Fortunately for the Negro and for the continuance of free institutions in the South, the nation slowly perceived this truth, but not until a long and bitter struggle had been carried on by the friends of freedom for manhood suffrage and human rights. These infamous, repressive and enslaving laws finally aroused the nation’s sense of justice and brought it to the realization of the undeniable truth that in a free government “the strong keen sword by which a freeman can protect all other rights and give value to all other privileges is the elective franchise.” ”

“ Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom.
If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and, proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; ”

“ If slaves owned in Border States, or in excepted parishes or counties, are sold to loyal men in insurrectionary States, are they still slaves? or do they become free? Are we to admit, or to deny, the constitutionality of Border-State laws, which arrest, and imprison as vagrants, and sell into slavery to pay expenses of arrest and imprisonment, free negro emigrants from insurrectionary States?11 But why multiply instances? ”

“ The planters loudly threatened to dissolve the Union, if slavery were not extended beyond the Mississippi. If the Union cannot be preserved without crime, it is an eternal truth that nothing good can be preserved by crime. The immense territories of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida are very likely to be formed into slave States; and every new vote on this side, places the free States more and more at the mercy of the South—and gives a renewed and apparently interminable lease to the duration of slavery. ”

“ The South, of course, was delighted with this verdict. What it meant was this. When the Declaration of Independence declared that all men are equal, and possess right to life and liberty, what was intended was not all men, but all white men, since black men are not legally men. And yet free negroes had fought in the War of Independence, and signed the Declaration.
To the North such reasoning was hateful. People like Mr. Seward of New York began to say, If slavery is part of the Constitution of America, there is a law that is higher than the Constitution—the moral law. ”

“ Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery, in a free state, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States Courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave state the negro may be forced into by the master. ”

“ Neither American liberty nor law required the Orange procession to be permitted, and if both liberty and law required a mob, when collected, to be dispersed and the violence suppressed, they both also required the protection of American citizens from public insult and outrage. ”

“ Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. ”

“ I believe that the Republic owes it to the emancipated slaves whom she promised to make truly and forever free, either to protect them by the arm of the Federal Government, or to enable them to protect themselves, and that the development of free labor and the cause of democratic government requires the enfranchisement of the negro just as much as the negro needs it for his own protection. ”

“ But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and cover the whole land. Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them any more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the one in any way greatly disturb the seven? There are many communities now having more than one free colored person to seven whites, and this without any apparent consciousness of evil from it. The District of Columbia and the States of Maryland and Delaware are all in this condition. ”

“ It declared the intervention of congress for the protection of slavery in the territories, demanded by leading democrats, a gross infraction of popular and national rights, which should be resisted by free men. ”

“ And if a majority of all the votes given for and against free negroes shall be given against free negroes, then the following section shall be added to the bill of rights and shall be a part of this constitution: 'No free negro or mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside or be within this state or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein ”