Slave territory

“ Then, by the assent and concurrence of Northern men, came in all the immense acquisition of slave territory which now opens so boundless a market to tempt the avarice and cupidity of the northern slave-raising states.
This acquisition of territory has deferred perhaps for indefinite ages the emancipation of a race. It has condemned to sorrow and 144heart-breaking separation, to groans and wailings, hundreds of thousands of slave families; it has built, through all the Southern States, slave-warehouses, with all their ghastly furnishings of gags, and thumb-screws, and cowhides ”

“ Whether the territory of the European nations who are interested in the Colonies and Plantations in America, are not populous enough, or may be rendered so, by proper encouragement given to matrimony and the breed of foundling infants, to supply their respective Colonies with labourers in the place of Negro Slaves? ”

“ Should we acquire the territory beyond the Rio Grande and east of the Rocky Mountains, it is still more impossible that a majority of the people would consent to reëstablish slavery. They are themselves a colored population, and among them the negro does not belong socially to a degraded race. ”

“ Slave labor has ever been found wasteful and exhaustive of the soil from which it has taken the crops. Therefore, it used to be a common saying, “the Southern planter needs all the lands that join his estate.”314 Ample as was the territory of that portion of the United States in which slavery was established, the “barons of the South” early looked beyond their borders for new acquisitions of land. Partly to gratify their cupidity, the immense tract of land between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the valley of the Columbia River, was purchased by our Federal Government in 1803. ”

“ Less than three-quarters of a century ago—say in 1789, for that was about the average time of the abolition of slavery in the Northern States—the South, with advantages in soil, climate, rivers, harbors, minerals, forests, and, indeed, almost every other natural resource, began an even race with the North in all the important pursuits of life; and now, in the brief space of scarce three score years and ten, we find her completely distanced, enervated, dejected and dishonored. Slave-drivers are the sole authors of her disgrace; as they have sown so let them reap. ”

“ There is one thought that affords a ray of consolation,—they are better off, in either condition, than they once were in Africa. It is unquestionable to my mind that their relation to the whites, even in bondage, is, as the general rule, mercy to them, while they are on the same soil with the whites. Allow it to be theoretically wrong to be a slave,—it is, under existing circumstances, protection and a blessing, compared with any arrangement which has yet been proposed. I have not sufficient patience to argue with those, North or South, who contend for slavery as a normal condition. ”

“ If it be no sin to introduce slavery into a free Sovereign State, then was England not so guilty in the first instance, for she sent slaves from a land of ignorance, cruelty, and idolatry, to an enlightened and Christian colony. ”

“ Such is the triumphant response by the aroused millions of the North, alike to the assumption of Slave-masters that the Constitution, of its own force, carries Slavery into the Territories, and also to the device of politicians, that the people of the Territories, in the exercise of a dishonest Popular Sovereignty, may plant Slavery there. ”

“ To those of our brothers, who shall be left behind, there will be assured perpetual slavery and augmented sufferings. Diminished in numbers, the slave population of the southern states, which by its magnitude alarms its proprietors, will be easily secured. ”

“ Slavery is becoming daily more and more odious, in the east, in the west, in the north, ay, and in the south. Individually, many slaveholders are becoming less attached to their property. There may be too much even of this good thing. Slavery would continue longer, in the present slave states, if it were extended to the new territories ”

“ What a plea for us Northern freemen! Do we think the slave-system such a happy, desirable thing for our brothers and sisters at the South? Can we look at our common schools, our neat, thriving towns and villages, our dignified, intelligent, self-respecting farmers and mechanics, all concomitants of free labor, and think slavery any blessing to our Southern brethren? ”

“ Out of our recent territorial acquisitions, and in connection with the institution of slavery, questions most grave sprung, which, greatly dividing and agitating the people of the United States, have threatened to disturb the harmony, if not to endanger the safety of the Union. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Colored people were allowed to ride in a filthy box, behind white people, at the south, but there they were not required to pay for the privilege. It made me sad to find how the north aped the customs of slavery. ”

“ The moment that the Southern mind became convinced, that slavery, as it exists among us, instead of being a moral, social, and political evil, is a moral, social, and political good, and is the natural condition of the negro, as ordained by Providence, and the only condition in which he can be civilized and instructed, the condition of the Southern slave underwent a thorough change. ”

“ There have not been wanting men and newspapers to urge that the United States should reimburse the slave-holders of the South for the wholesale confiscation, so to speak, of their property. True, these men and newspapers belong to that class of unrepentants who believed that slavery was a Divine institution and that the slave-holder was a sort of vicegerent of heaven, a holy Moses, as it were. ”

“ The Northern Abolitionists, to whom no contract or agreement was sacred that involved the continuance of slavery, regarded the clauses in the Federal Constitution which maintained the property rights of the slave-owners as treaties with evil, binding on no one, and bitterly attacked the slave-holders and the South generally. ”

“ No community of natives demonstrates the peculiar workings of domestic slavery so well as these people, for in no other place on the coast can any one find so many instances of the rapid rise of a bought slave from the lowest rung of the slave ladder to the topmost. ”

“ Slaves were prohibited to carry anus, offensive or defensive, or to go off the plantations of their masters without a written pass, or to lift hand against a Christian even in self-defense. Runaways who refused to be apprehended might be lawfully killed. The condition of slavery was imposed upon all servants, whether negroes, Moors, mulattoes, or Indians, brought into the colony by sea or land, whether converted to Christianity or not, provided they were not of Christian parentage or country, or Turks or Moors in amity with his majesty. ”

“ African slavery existed in all the colonies, under the sanction of the British government, prior to the declaration of independence. When the constitution of the United States was adopted, it became the supreme law and bond of union between twelve slaveholding states and one non-slaveholding state. Each state reserved the right to decide the question of slavery for itself—to continue it as a domestic institution so long as it pleased, and to abolish it when it chose. ”

“ This discovery having been made, the people of the North, at an early day, began to dispose of their slaves by sale to citizens of the Southern States, whose soil, climate, and productions were better adapted to their habits and capacities; and the legislation of the Northern States, following the course of publick opinion, was directed, not to emancipation, but to the removal of the slave population beyond their limits. ”

“ The whole, or the greatest part of that immense continent, is a field of warfare and desolation; a wilderness in which the inhabitants are wolves towards each other That this scene of oppression, fraud, treachery, and bloodshed, if not originally occasioned, is in part (I will not say wholly) upheld by the slave-trade, I dare not dispute. Every man in the sugar islands may be convinced that it is so, who will inquire of any African negroes, on their first arrival, concerning the circumstances of their captivity. ”

“ First, we observe, that the African race, in the Middle, Western, and more Southern parts of the Continent, have for many centuries, or from time immemorial, been most barbarous and degraded, and in the practice of domestic slavery on the largest scale and in the most inhuman forms, entirely independent of the effects of the slave traffic by exportation from Africa to America. ”

“ In the course of the debate on this subject, we have been told that, from the long habit of the southern and western people, the possession of slaves has become necessary to them, and an essential requisite in their living. It has been urged, from the nature of the climate and soil of the southern countries, that the lands cannot be occupied or cultivated without slaves. It has been said that the slaves prosper in those places, and that they are much better off there than in their own native country. ”

“ The negroes imported from the African coast, whose descendants now constitute a sixth part of the population of the United States, were not by any means of one nation, language, or race. A single slave-ship often brought to America a great variety of languages and customs, a collection of unfortunate strangers to each other, or perhaps of hereditary enemies, with no common bond except that of servitude. ”

“ Failing to seize a runaway slave, when he has him in his power, is held to be one of the most dishonorable acts to which a southern planter can subject himself. Nor should the people of the North be surprised at this. Slaves are regarded, in the South, as the most precious of all earthly possessions; and, at the same time, as a precarious and hazardous kind of property, in the enjoyment of which the master is not safe. The planters may well be compared to the inhabitants of a national frontier, which is exposed to the inroads of hostile invading tribes. ”

“ In all the territory south of said line of latitude, slavery of the African race is hereby recognized as existing, and shall not be interfered with by Congress, but shall be protected as property by all the departments of the territorial government during its continuance. ”

“ Every one of us who was in favor of the compromise measures of 1850 was arraigned for having advocated a principle purposing to introduce slavery into those territories, and the people were told, and made to believe, that, unless we prohibited it by act of congress, slavery would necessarily and inevitably be introduced into these territories. ”

“ She has sent,—or we should rather say, she has driven,—from her soil at least one third of all the emigrants who have gone from the old states to the new. More than another third have gone from the other old slave states. Many of these multitudes, who have left the slave states, have shunned the regions of slavery, and settled in the free countries of the west. These were generally industrious and enterprising white men, who found, by sad experience, that a country of slaves was not the country for them. ”

“ Our coast, and its contiguity to the West Indies and the Spanish possessions, render easy the introduction of slaves into our country. Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet it is a well-known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year. ”

“ Of the numerous classes of persons from the north who temporarily reside in the slave states, the mechanics who find employment on the plantations, are the only persons who are in circumstances to look "behind the scenes." Merchants, pedlars, venders of patents, drovers, speculators, and almost all descriptions of persons who go from the free states to the south to make money see little of slavery, except upon the road, at public inns, and in villages and cities. ”

“ The colonies of this group, occupying the central portion of the English possessions, comprise those communities where, on account of climate, physical characteristics, and circumstances of settlement, slavery as an institution found but a narrow field for development. The climate was generally rather cool for the newly imported slaves, the soil was best suited to crops to which slave labor was poorly adapted, and the training and habits of the great body of settlers offered little chance for the growth of a slave system. ”

“ The slave states, of course, would not support the Northern for a year if cotton, sugar, and tobacco became suddenly worthless. But, nevertheless, the slave owners would have strong grounds to stand upon if they were content to point to the difficulties in the way of emancipation, and the circumstances under which they received their damnosa hereditas from England, which fostered, nay forced, slavery in legislative hotbeds throughout the colonies. ”

“ The struggle which you now see beginning, and which this northern appeal to southern consciences has provoked, is plainly, to my mind, the final and decisive struggle between the extension and perpetuation of slavery on the one hand and emancipation on the other. he institution of slavery in this country is vastly more potent than any body had supposed. ”

“ The prosecution of this work has a happy influence on the general interests of the blacks, by introducing into the slave-holding states inquiry and discussion respecting the evils of slavery, and the possibility of its abolition. Says the above writer in the Christian Spectator, “The great body of the friends of the Colonization Society, at the South no less than at the North, regard the scheme of that institution as something, which will ultimately, in some way, deliver the land of the curse of Slavery. All who oppose the Society there, oppose it on the same ground. ”