Free settler

“ By ‘others’ I don’t mean other settlers, altogether, though I do mean free people. By that time a good many convicts had served out their sentences and become free. They were known as ‘emancipists,’ and consequently there were three kinds of people in the colony,—emancipists, convicts, and free settlers. The free settlers would not associate with the emancipists, and they in turn would not associate with the convicts. The free settlers wanted the emancipists to be deprived of all civil rights and kept practically in the same position as the convicts. ”

“ Hitherto the people had been either convicts or free settlers of more or less wealth, and between these classes there was great bitterness of feeling, each, naturally enough, thinking that the colony existed for their own exclusive benefit. The free labourers who now poured in greatly contributed in course of time to fusing the population into one. ”

“ To render it a blessing again, we have only to restore the circumstances which made it so formerly—sending out the convicts when not completely hardened in depravity, and in such a proportion to the free settlers as to keep them a small minority to the free and untainted part of the community. The immigration of convicts to our colonies is like that of the Irish into western Britain: everything depends on the proportion they bear to the remainder of the population. ”

“ In consequence of this, the last-named class were thrown into the background, a kind of check was given to emigration, and, what was worst of all, two parties were set on foot within the settlement, altogether opposed to each other;—the exclusionists, who were free settlers, refused to associate at all with those that had ever been convicts; and the emancipists considered that a convict, after his time of punishment had expired, was just as good as any other man. ”

“ It was not easy at all times for the free settlers to make a distinction among emancipists, and so they came to a quick conclusion by denouncing all. However, that state of society has all passed away; convicts, emancipists, and free settlers of the first quarter of this century are all dead and gone now, with, possibly, a few exceptions. ”

“ I must, however, in justice to the original Free Settlers, observe that ... they are not all of one mind in this respect. Amongst them some few liberal-minded persons are to be found who do not wish to keep those unfortunate persons for ever in a state of degradation." [32]
The Secretary of State agreed in cautious terms with the general principle, for he thought "perpetual exclusion" would be an obstacle to the reform of the convicts of the settlement. ”

“ It cannot be denied that in a community spreading over a large extent of territory, and politically founded upon the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, but [Pg 120] differing so widely in the elements of their social condition, that the inhabitants of one-half the territory are wholly free, and those of the other half divided into masters and slaves, deep if not irreconcilable collisions of interest must abound. ”

“ If, on the one hand, the consecration of this soil to freedom will [Pg 27] exclude the slaveholders of the south, it is just as true, on the other hand, that the desecration of it to slavery will exclude the freemen of the north. We, at the north, know too well the foundations of worldly prosperity and happiness; we know too well the sources of social and moral welfare, ever voluntarily to blend our fortunes with those of a community where slavery is tolerated. If our demand for free territory, then, excludes them, their demand for slave territory excludes us. ”

“ Among the colonies of England, what Act arouses a joy the deepest and most universal but that of Slave Emancipation? Does not every oppressed nation groan in its bondage? Does not every free nation exult in its freedom? ”

“ Most important of all has been the fact that an area of free land has continually lain on the western border of the settled area of the United States. Whenever social conditions tended to crystallize in the East, whenever capital tended to press upon labor or political restraints to impede the freedom of the mass, there was this gate of escape to the free conditions of the frontier. These free lands promoted individualism, economic equality, freedom to rise, democracy. ”

“ The necessity for this radical departure from the established practice of the government seems to have been to find a safe basis for the holding and governing of regions, the free introduction of whose products might affect the home industries unfavorably, and the admission of whose people to citizenship might imply future statehood—or at least the right of migration and settlement in the states of an undesirable population. ”

“ Nor can we conceive why free citizens, acting this liberty, should interfere with them, if they are—as they have represented themselves to be—honest and benevolent men. We conceive that the question in view stands in two distinct points—the removal of the free colored population from this country, or the acknowledgment of them as citizens. ”

“ Thus was founded the great colony of free humanity, which has not old England alone, but the world for its mother country. And in the colony of free humanity, whose mother country is the world, they established the Republic of equal rights where the title of manhood is the title to citizenship. ”

“ For, although a question of fact, it is capable of no more conclusive settlement than an enlightened public opinion can afford; and who are so well situated to form an opinion as the free and intelligent communities of the South? ”

“ But would such a measure, on the part of government, be tolerated by the labouring poor in a free country? or rather ought it to be tolerated? Would not insurrections, rick-burning, prison-breaking, martial law, and ten thousand convictions for sedition be the result? ”

“ For scarcely had the infant settlement, through the gradual influx of immigrants, begun to assume the appearance of a colony, when the original sin of its constitution appeared in the form of an evil, fatal not only to the well-being, but even to the very existence of a free community. ”

“ Rush, in the Continental Congress, wished "the Colonies to discourage slavery, and encourage the increase of the free inhabitants." Another member of the American Congress declared, in 1779, "Men are by nature free;" "the right to be free can never be alienated." ”

“ The Congress have already proclaimed this, and that no other qualification or name is necessary but to become settlers, without distinction of countries or persons. The European peasant, who toils for his scanty sustenance in penury, wretchedness, and servitude, will eagerly fly to this asylum for free and industrious labor. The tide of emigration may set strongly outward from Scotland, Ireland, and Canada to this new land of promise. ”

“ From such a measure it is obvious that many advantages must result. It would effectually separate the convict from the free population: the labour of forming a new settlement would afford constant means of employment, and that of a severe description. ”

“ Everywhere you see lands that are worn out, barren and deserted, in consequence of slave tillage, left for more fertile lands in newer regions, which are also, in their turn, to be smitten with sterility and forsaken. The free community may increase its population almost without limit. [Pg 90] The capacity of slave countries to sustain a population is soon at an end, and then, it diminishes. In all the elements of essential prosperity, in all that elevates man, how striking the contrast between the region that is tilled by slave, and the region that is tilled by free labor. ”

“ These privileges were fixed laws, by which the trade and industry of the citizens were encouraged, and their lives and properties ascertained and protected, and no longer subjected to the laws of mere will and pleasure: And therefore, while these free cities, enjoying their own liberties and laws, flourished under them, the provinces were miserably harrassed, pillaged, dispeopled, and impoverished, and the inhabitants exhausted, starved, butchered, and carried away captive. ”

“ Do the Northern or Free States of the Union think to clear their skirts of the abomination of Slavery, by saying that they own no slaves? Very true. But is the poor, flying fugitive from the house of bondage, safe one moment within your borders? ”

“ What manner of settlement is that which does not settle the difficulty and quiet the dispute? Are not the friends of the compromise becoming the agitators, and will not the country hold us responsible for that which we condemn and denounce in the abolitionists and Free-soldiers? ”

“ Fellow-citizens,—with a body of men thus composed, for legislators and executors of the laws, what will, what must be, what has been your legislation? The numbers of freemen constituting your nation are much greater than those of the slaveholding States, bond and free. You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union. ”

“ We declare that [14] all slaves that shall enter our kingdom, by land or by sea, shall be free; and further order, that every one born a slave in our dominions shall be considered as free from the very instant of his birth, and that he shall neither be sold nor bought. ”

“ Cruel as was the system in many ways, it gave thousands of people in the Old World a chance to reach the New—an opportunity to wrestle with fate for freedom and a home of their own. When their weary years of servitude were over, if they survived, they might obtain land of their own or settle as free mechanics in the towns. ”

“ While still firm in their opposition to slavery in the territories, the Republicans went on record in favor of a homestead law granting free lands to settlers and approved customs duties designed "to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country." ”

“ For they are received as strangers, they become inhabitants bereft of the rights of inhabitants; they who receive them as foreigners and aliens begin to treat them as property, and change into slaves those who, evidently, were free.
In this picture of the colonist, we may find the outline of the villain of a later age; and in the several enactments and regulations of succeeding legislators and councils, we shall discover the changes which servitude underwent previous to its total extinction in Europe. ”

“ The returns of population have, accordingly, for some time, shewn a considerable excess of free persons; and the formation of settlements in the North, for the removal of the convicts not necessary for the service of these, and of the government, with other arrangements, shew, that the interests of the former have become a subject of consideration, independently of the latter ”

“ Resolved, That as the people of the free States have from the beginning been partakers in the iniquity of slavery,—accomplices of the oppressors of the poor laborers at the South,—therefore we ought to join hands with them in any well-devised measures for the emancipation of their bondmen. Our wealth and the wealth of the nation ought to be put in requisition, to relieve those who may impoverish themselves by setting their captives free; to furnish the freed men with such comforts, conveniences, implements of labor as they may need ”

“ In the fourth article of confederation, it is declared, 'that the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each state shall, in every other, enjoy all the privileges of trade and commerce,' &c. There is a confusion of language here, which is remarkable. Why the terms free inhabitants are used in one part of the article, free citizens in another, and people in another ”

“ Their gradual emancipation, therefore, under the advantages of a free government, formed, in their native land, by their own hands, offering all the rewards usual to industry and economy, and affording the means of enjoying, in comfort, a reputable and free existence, is the only rational scheme of relieving them from the bondage of their present condition.' * * * 'To eradicate or remove the evil immediately, is impossible ”

“ It is a work of time, expense, and difficulty to explore the windings of a coast; more an object for Government to accomplish, than for an individual to undertake. You conjecture that this is a desirable part of the continent to select for a settlement, but it may be long before this place shall be located, and a solitary settler would labour under many disadvantages in his isolation. ”

“ For obvious reasons, we pray the freedmen, in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to the last proposition, and in every county and town where their political rights are ignored by a rebel Democracy, let them form colonies under a chosen leader and emigrate West. If they cannot go without assistance, let that fact be communicated to us, and we will appeal to the people of the North to furnish them the means to do so. ”

“ Now, what a spectacle is presented to the world!—the Amer [Pg 14] ican people, boasting of their free and equal rights—of their abhorrence of aristocratical distinctions—of their republican equality; proclaiming on every wind, "that all men are born equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights," and that this land is an asylum for the persecuted of all nations ”

“ Tenants still bound to render feudal services to their lords were not reckoned among the true aristocracy of the freemen, who in admitting them to a limited fellowship marked their sense of the difference of status between the free burgher and the man who was but half emancipated; “and such men ought not to be called citizens or our fellow citizens ... because they are ‘natives,’ or born in the behalf of their lords, and do hold their tenements by foreign services and are not burgesses.” ”

“ This was the settlers' protection against their slaves running away from them. Within the limit of the township to which he belonged, every man was free, but as soon as he got beyond the boundary, he must produce his passport, stating who he was, and where he belonged to, or he was taken off to the nearest gaol, where, if not claimed by his former master, he could be sold again; so that in getting away from one place the man would but be changing masters. ”