A voice from the South : comprising Letters from Georgia to Massachusetts, and to the southern states : with an appendix containing an article from the Charleston Mercury on the Wilmot proviso together with the fourth article of the Constitution, the Law of Congress, the Nullification law of Pennsylvania, the Resolutions of ten of the free states, the Resolutions of Virginia, Georgia and Alabama, and Mr. Calhoun's resolutions in the Senate of the United States

VOICE FROM THE SOUTH
GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS,
CONTAINING AN ARTICLE FROM THE CHARLESTON MERCURY ON THE WILMOT PROVISO, TOSETHER WITH THE FOURTH ARTICLE OF THE CONSTITUTION, THE LAW OF CONGRESS, THE NULLIFICATION LAW OF PENNSYLVANIA, THE RESOLUTIONS OF TEN OF THE FREE STATES, THE RESOLUTIONS OF VIRGINIA, GEORGIA AND ALABAMA, AND MR. CALHOUN'S RE SOLUTIONS IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
BALTIMORE: WESTERN CONTINENT PRESS.
1847.
GENERAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
MUOE PURCHASE.

INTRODUCTION.
THE interest with which the following letters have been generally read., and the claims of the South, to a fair hearing at the bar of public opinion, upon the all-ex citing subject of Slavery, have induced us to place them in a permanent form. We think they will commend themselves to every candid and impartial reader, both as to their style and matter. We do not profess to be an impartial judge of their mer its, Southern as we are in all our feelings; but we hardly think we are so far biased by our prejudices,, as to misjudge when we say, that most readers will rise from the perusal of this pamphlet more favorably disposed towards Georgia than Massachu setts.
In order to a proper appreciation of these letters, the reader must remember that the Author speaks throughout, in the character of a Sovereign State, which had long been abused by the Abolitionists, and which had received some personaj aggressions from Massachusetts, in regard to her Slave property and other things as indeed had Virginia, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Massachusetts may well be considered the mother of Abolitionism; indeed her State Abolition Society lays claim to this honor for her; and no one will dispute it with her. She has been the most restless agitator upon this subject by far, of any State in the Union.
But a few years back, a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a citi zen of Georgia, and one of the most holy, zealous Christians belonging to that Church, and distinguished for the extent and the success of his labors among the Blacks, married a lady who owned Slaves, which upon his marriage he made over to her. At the next General Conference of that Church, he was arraigned for this act by the Abolitionists, and by a vote of the Anti-Slaveholders, he was required to desist from his official duties until he should absolve himself from his connection with Slavery. This produced a division of that Church; thirteen Annual Confer ences and about five hundred thousand members, moving off from the old, and form ing a new Ecclesiastical connection. About the same time a split occurred in the Baptist Church, by reason of plain encroachments of the rights of Southern mem bers, on the ground of Slavery. In the mean time, Congress had been hara

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INTRODUCTION.

every Session with numberless petitions of which Mr. ADAMS was usually made the conduit-pipe upon the subject of Slavery, over which every body who is not wilfully blind knows Congress has no authority. At length came the WILMOT Proviso, a copy of which is appended to these letters. About the time that it was in progress, we wrote to the Author of Georgia's Letters, informing him among other things, of the stand which we had taken upon the subject of Abolitionism, and of the alarming extent to which it was growing, and of which we knew the people of Georgia were generally profoundly ignorant; for Abolition papers are excluded from that State by statute. This brought him out in the character and in the de fence of Georgia. This character he sustains throughout, and of course he speaks with the independence and severity of a Sovereign State long trampled upon and insulted by one that was but an equal to say the least of it.
Georgia's position would have justified even the most intemperate recrimi nation, in addressing Massachusetts for Massachusetts was the chief agent in fastening Slavery upon her; and if this fact, as one of the British Reviews says, does not justify a Slave State in supporting Slavery, it certainly justifies her in look ing for courtesy from those who fastened the institution upon her, and in demanding silence from them, until they will point out some practicable mode of getting rid of it. No such mode does any of them point out nothing like courtesy does she re ceive from any of them. She has a right to demand of all the Free States, whose Slaves have been sold at the South, that they shall each at fair prices purchase back as many as they sold, with their proportionate increase, before they abuse her and complot her ruin, by endeavoring to hem in the whites and blacks until they cannot live on the same territory. This openly avowed purpose, is monstrous shocking . and when we consider that it was actually in a course of experiment by the WIL MOT Proviso when Georgia took the pen, we will rather wonder at her temperance and self-command than at her severity. She is the greatest cotton growing State in the Union, and to her Cotton is Massachusetts mainly indebted for what she is worth. If she would return to Georgia all that she has made by manufacturing her produce and carrying it to market, and trading with her, with interest on it, Georgia would this day be able to buy Massachusetts, and yet have enough to live on. We are ourselves, to a certain extent, protectionists, and we do not believe that Georgia has suffered as much by that system, as she thinks she has ; but in reading these fetters, we must remember what Georgia thinks, and has ever thought. Her opinLon has ever been that the constantly descending price of her great staple is owing to the tariff; and if this be true, she has lost millions annually for thirty years by the very policy which has built up Massachusetts. This, all must accord to her; that she has asked nothing but to be let alone in the management of her own con cerns. Now, with these views, to find herself abused by Massachusetts, and the Northern States making common cause with Massachusetts against her, and in their attacks unsettling the very foundations of the Government, was well calculated to drive her to desperation ; and every candid reader will, as we have intimated, rather admire her equanimity, than condemn her severity, cutting and excoriating as some of her remarks are. We think her vindication of herself complete ; and that when the storms of Abolitionism shall have blown over, or overset the Republic, history will, not place her below Massachusetts, in anything that constitutes the real worth of a nation.

INTRODUCTION.

7

It was not the original intention of Georgia, to have done more than to have vindicated herself from the attacks of the Abolitionists, and to have compared her self with Massachusetts, in those traits of character which distinguish them as members of one family ; but upon learning that her letters would be pamphleted, (and perhaps upon our request to extend them,) she determined to make her defence more complete; and to extend it to the many false rumors and impressions which were current in the world in regard to Slavery, and its effects upon Southern char acter.
If these letters affect others as they have us, we think Georgia has laid the Southern States under lasting obligations to her. The force of them lies in this: that they are true to the letter; and will be found so upon the strictest examination of impartial history.
This way of bringing the States in comparison with each other, is well cal" culated to have a fine moral effect upon the States themselves, as it will teach them to be careful how, for a time-serving purpose, they depart from the line of rectitude. Georgia says in one of her letters to us; '' I am obnoxious to some pretty severe raps for my own past conduct, which I suppose I shall get. Well, let them come ; they will teach me better for the future; and teach othefs, that in the end, the strait course is always the best course. What I have said, however, will be found true, viz : that my faults have been such as affect no body but myself; those of Massachusetts have been obtrusive, contagious, and I fear are likely to become mor tal to the body politic. I thought the time had come for some one to speak in de fence of the South, if her sons did not intend to be fibbed out of their character as well as choused of their rights."

In another letter Georgia says: " Writing under a sense of wrongs, long continued and unprovoked and in full view of the dangers which threaten the country from these wrongs, and with the branding-iron of Abolitionism still upon ,. me, (hear them talk of " Southern Intolerance!") I find that I have been frequently betrayed into feelings too warm, and expressions too harsh." Accordingly, upon learning that these letters were to be put in the present form, Georgia has softened some of the severer passages in them. We think she need not have been so scru pulous, for surely the South has borne enough, and long enough, to weary the pa tience of Job himself. It is a singular fact, that even complaint of Abolition en croachment on the part of any son of the South, is called " Southern Intolerance ;" and we are given to understand, that even this will not be allowed by the North* Truly we have fallen upon strange times !

For the information of the Southern public, we have added, as a valuable Appendix to these Letters, the article from the Charleston Mercury of the 11th August, in which the aggressive and revolutionary tendency of the WILMOT Pro viso is most ably set forth by the editor. The Appendix also contains article 4, sec tion 2, of the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing the Rights of the South; the Law of Congress of 1793, giving Protection to the Slave Property of the South; the Law of Pennsylvania in effect nullifying that Law of Congress, and in open violation of the spirit of the Constitution; the WILMOT Proviso, with

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APPENDIX.

the Resolutions of the States of Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Ohio, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Maine, in fa vor of its provisions 5 the Resolutions of the Democratic Conventions of Virginia> Georgia and Alabama; and Mr. CALHOUN'S Resolutions in the Senate.

EDITOR WESTERN CONTINENT,

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS,
L ETTE R I.
DEAR SISTER MASS : Read this letter, attentively, patiently, and candidly; and when you shall
have read it, place it among your archives, where History may find it, when Aboli tionism, of which you are the mother, and the chief supporter, shall have accom plished its now undisguised purpose. In addressing you, I shall endeavor to observe the respect due to an elder sister ; but, at the same time, I must guard you against confounding truths which prove you to be entitled to no respect at all, with a breach of courtesy. Certainly, after the unsparing and unprovoked abuse which you have heaped upon me and my neighboring sisters for many years, I might be pardoned for the most bitter recriminations ; but if I were not deterred from them by self-re spect, and the dread that I have of being thought like you in any respect, I should certainly forbear them now that I am about to give to the world so much of your history as involves my interests, and the points of difference between us ; for if you be not invulnerable, this will inflict a wound upon you, deep enough, and painful enough, to appease even malignity itself; and I am sure I have not a particle of that in my composition. It will irritate you, I know, sister Mass. what that comes from the South does not ? But to this I am indifferent; not because I delight in provocation, but because it will give you some little apology for wrath which you have enkindled without cause, and cherished without excuse, for many long years. Some things that I have to say to you will be equally applicable to your neighbors, who have imbibed your principles. To such I have a caution, but no apology to offer : the caution is, that they avoid the common fault of proselytes, which is to take to themselves an over-share of the disgrace which may attach to their new faith, in the belief that this will entitle them to an over-share of its honors.
When I first settled in this country, as you may remember, I proclaimed to the world that I intended to have nothing to do with Slavery ; and Tadhered steadfastly to my resolution, until it was overpowered by the complaints of my children. They compared my situation with my sister's on the other side of the Savannah. 1 was gaining but a bare subsistence, they said, by the labor of my children, while she was growing rich by the labor of slaves. Her sons were sent over to England, to receive a liberal education, while mine were kept constantly employed delving for bread in my unhealthy lowlands, or nursing silk-worms on my arid barrens. They censured my squeamishness in regard to Slavery, and pointed to all the other sisters of the family, especially to you and sister Penny, who made great pretensions to piety, as entertaining no scruples upon that subject. Indeed, the prevailing opinion of the whole family at that time was, that it was a mercy to the African race to

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bring them, even as slaves, from the miseries of their own country, to this. Urged
by these considerations, and many others, and finding myself unsupported by a sin gle member of the family in my opposition to Slavery, I at length yielded a reluctant
consent to the introduction of slaves into my domain. My consent was no sooner obtained than you and mother Britannia filled my ports, my fields, and my houses, with these unfortunate beings Slaves, " kidnapped" at their parents' doors, by "man-stealers,"invery truth, carrying your blood and our mother's blood in their
veins ; but not a drop of mine. Man-stealers, who are verily complimented by the
name, as you would readily admit, had you seen them, as I have seen them, coming into port with an escort of sharks, and landing their cargoes of naked, starving, sick, and dead, and dying human beings, from the most infernal fetid pits that man ever lived in or ever died in. I have often seen my children weep over these wretched victims of Yankee avarice, while yours drove their trades, with all that same selfsufficiency, pertness, humor and disgusting suppleness, which marks the character
of your Pedlars at the present day. I have known these miserable wretches, when just from the hands of the Britton and the Yankee, to dispute with the vultures for the half-devoured carcass that lay by the highway, and with difficulty restrained
from feeding upon the loathsome mass of putrescence. Indeed the first care of the purchaser from the slave-ship used to be, to prevent them from killing themselves by surfeit. For the part which my sons took in these shocking scenes, God may, for
aught I know, have judgments in reserve for me; but I cannot believe that he will ever use you as the instrument for executing them. That my children, in pur chasing slaves from yours, delivered them from the most cruel bondage that man ever groaned under, is most true that there was pity and compassion on the side of the purchasers, and none on the side of the venders, is equally true; but for these . things I give them no credit, because selfishness and not humanity urged them to the traffic. But if they be guilty, they who never owned a slave ship or sailed on board of one they who never enslaved a freeman they to whom the slave rushed
with joy from the cruelties of your sons they who would not look into the floating
dungeons, from which your boys daily drew their famished dead, for many long weeks in mercy's name, where do you stand ? Of all the sisterhood, you should be the first to sympathize with me and the last to upbraid me. But you are the file-
leader in this modern crusade upon Southern rights; and the end of it will be just
what might be expected from such a leader in such a cause trouble to us both, but a thousand times more trouble to you than to me. Laugh at the prediction if you please but bear it in mind, the remit of your movements will be more disastrous
to you and your allies, than to me and mine. Why, I thus judge, will be dis closed in the sequel, when I shall return to this subject. As a proper introduction
to it, let us pursue your history in order. You and mother Brit, having " put the price of human flesh in your pockets,"
went off glorying in your profits leaving me to manage this flesh as I could. In process of time, the Old Lady grew weary of making money by the slow process
of traffic with her daughters; and she determined to get it in a more summary
way by virtue of her authority. Accordingly she issued her orders that we should all be taxed. This was a direct approach to the seat of your sensibilities, and of
course you became desperate. You called upon us all to unite with you in resist ing her exactions. The other sisters responded promptly to the call; but what was
f to do 1 I was very young, and very weak. Father OGMLETHORPE had with ^/fficulty saved my life from the Spanish sword. My mother had for a long time, as I have intimated, kept me poor, by confining me to the silk business, instead of
letting me choose my own occupation. I was surrounded by Indian tribes, numer ous and warlike. Your importations of " flesh and blood" had by this time in creased upon me to rather an alarming extent and of course I was in no situation to throw off parental axithority and meet the inevitable consequences. Withal, I
was just beginning to gain health and strength. My affairs were intrusted to the supervision of JAMES WK.IGHT, a most amiable, excellent, prudent man, who
left me no ground of complaint. As for the tax, it did not hurt me: for the plaiu

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

11

reason that I had little or nothing to be taxed. As for tea, not one in a hundred of my children ever used it; and most of them, I believe, had never seen it. To espouse your cause under these circumstances, was, it seemed to me, to sacrifice everything1 and to gain nothing. And 1 yet to stand by and see you flogged into submission, to unrighteous exactions, was abhorrent to every principle of my na ture. I did what you never do I sacrificed interest to principle and joined you . I say I joined you : for you were the only one of the family who had come to blows with our mother. The rest of us were foolishly hoping for a compromise ; but you took the better course. Convinced of the justness of your cause, you resisted op pression at its first approach ; and you did well, as the event clearly proved. In cases of doubtful right, compromises are excellent things ; but where there is flagrant injustice, cruelty and extortion on the one hand, and clear right on the other, a com promise is no better than a reward to iniquity for it-3 daring, and a promise to double the premium at short payment, when it becomes doubly villainous. He is a fool, or a suicide, or both, who tries to appease the bloodhound by giving him a lap of his blood ; and man bereft of every moral sense, is but a bloodhound with human saga city. You did right, therefore, sister Mass, in resisting oppression in limine, though it seemed a desperate adventure at the time. My support of you, ruined me for a time.
We conquered, and having severed the connexion with our unnatural parent, we were now all, by common consent, at liberty to manage our own affairs in our own way. Not one of the sisters dreamed that she had any right to intermeddle with the, domestic concerns of another. Withal, these were days of decency and courtesy, which protected each from the intrusions of another. That such was the general understanding at that time, was proved beyond question by the fact, that when the social compact was formed, two of the sisters refused for a time to unite in it; and during this time they were considered by all as entirely independent of the rest. This was " the Government of the People," as we learn from high judicial au thority, which three millions could not enforce upon four hundred and sixty thou sand, and which eleven communities could not enforce upon two! I beg you to remember these things for future uses. Absolved from maternal authority, we agreed to band together for the common defence and general welfare. To this end we drew up articles of confederation, in which we confided to deputies chosen by us a\J, th"iiiah"ageil5eHt ofour foreign relations, and such matters as were of general interest; while we reserved to ourselves individually the entire management of our local concerns. It was in settling these articles that you and I divided for the first time ; and as we have never agreed since, I beg leave to submit to the judgment of the world the points of difference between us, with the course of us both in our opposition. You were for clothing the Deputies with powers to force us to a per petual union, and to revise, if not to direct, all our household movements. You supposed there would be a perpetual tendency in the sisterhood to fly from each other, and you would have made the Deputies " ivhippers in" to us. Indeed, I think I would hazard nothing in saying, that you would gladly have adopted the Old Lady's system of government which we had just thrown off. Nor have I a scruple of blame to attach to you on this account. They were strange views, to be sure, under the circumstances, and in point of consistency, in perfect keeping with your views ever since; but then they were sincere, and therefore they received from me the most liberal indulgence an indulgence which I would gladly have repeated, had you afforded me an opportunity like favorable, within the last fifty years.
On the other hand, I believed that the ties of friendship, kindred, and common, interest would keep us together in love and harmony, without the aid of a driver*s, thong our children intermingling and intermarrying, I could not conceive how we ^ were ever to fall out. Nor could I see, nor can I yet see, the propriety of keeping / any sister in the family, who might wish to leave it. My dread was of the Depu--V~ ties. Power I knew to be self-sustaining and self-increasing. All history had proved this. My plan, therefore, was to clothe the Deputies with just power-

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LETTER FROM

enough to discharge the trust confided to them, and no more. My plan prevailed ; and one would suppose or rather, one would liave supposed, that you possessed modesty enough to await the decisions of experience, upon the questions of differ ences between you, and a large majority of the family. Not you, however. That your judgment was not considered authoritative, seems to have been considered an ample apology to yourself, at least, for lajing aside all modesty, all courtesy, all decency, and all consistency, when you stept into the confederacy. As you could not have the articles cut to your pattern, you determined to stretch them to it; and accordingly you have been for sixty years, engaged in the singular employ ment of fitting your rejected suit to the Deputies, and then abusing them most un mercifully, fir wearing it or to speak without a figure you have ever been labor ing to increase the powers of the Deputies, by construction ; and yet ever complain ing, most bitterly, of their abuse of power. Counting out WASHING-TON'S admin istration, about which there is a sanctity, which none of us dare invade, you have quarrelled with every other save one; and that one every body else quarrelled with. It was but recently your son John cried out, " we have been under slave domination for forty years:" and yet, you are as ripe for increasing that power as ever you were. And here lies the secret of your desperate abolition efforts. That you have not half the sympathy for the slave that I have, I will prove to the satis faction of every unprejudiced mind. I could excuse your zeal in behalf of freedom, if yon had wit enough to conceal its true object. But so palpably does selfishness a yearning for the loaves and fishes, evince itself, in all your mock philanthrophy., that to credit you for the virtue which you feign, would be to discredit myself for common sense. But let me not anticipate.
The confederation established, we all got along pretty well. Your children came in great numbers to my domain, and I received them kindly. I did not like their .jways in all respects they were too forward, too tricky, and too covetous ; but as these were hereditary faults, that I knew would soon wear away in this latitude, and as they possessed some redeeming virtues, I gave them a hearty welcome. They tarried with me, married into my family, and raised a numerous progeny, who now carry in their veins the blood of us both. Let me impress this feet upon your memory, as it has an important connection with what I have yet to say.
We had not long set up for ourselves, before the war between France and Eng land commenced. The blood of the first had hardly dried up from your fields, and the stripes of the last had hardly cured up on your back, and yet you took sides with the latter. This you did before you could plead the horrors of the Revolution as an apology for your unnatural preference. Indeed those horrors were the results of mis directed zeal in a really good cause ; like your burning down Catholic Churches to advance the cause of Religion. France was your ally, England was your enemy. The first, struggled for the people ; the last struggled fir kings. The one, lighted the torch of freedom at your own altars; the other, at the same altars, mingled yoar blood with your sacrifices. The one was a reformer ; the other was an intermeddler. And yet you took sides with the latter! I could not follow you, and here we split again. In that contest both trampled upon our rights, but it was for the last to seize our children and make them lift the sword against their benefactors. Our
children, did I say ! Not ours, but yours. Not one did I lose by this daring as sumption ; but you lost many. For this and many other insults and wrongs, we dec-lared war against Britain. And where were you now? There were your own sons really " bondsmen" in the hands of "man-stealers ;" and there was your prop erty confiscated by their "masters." You, of course, warmly espoused the war which was declared to punish these outrages; did you not? Not you: you opposed it, you denounced it, and you interposed every barrier to its success that you possibly could. With one eye upon Bunker's Hill, and the other upon Yorktown, you lauded GEORGE the Third, and calumniated MADISON; and when you found that all your efforts to arrest the war proved abortive, you sent one portion of your child ren to plot a dissolution of the Union, and another to your waterfalls to supplant your beloved friend in manufactures.

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

13

The war ended, we next find you making your conges to that much abused govern ment, and humbly soliciting a little protection fur those generous sons of yours, who had magnanimously stept forward,, in the time of distress., to supply the country with clothing. You told us that if the government which you had so kindly befriended, would only fling its protecting arms about them for a few years, you would release it from further obligation, throw yourself, like other people, upon your own resources, and make a wonderful return for the boon extended to them. It was granted; and surely, after what had transpired, if you could stoop to ask it, they who granted it may be excused on the score of heroism, if not of justice and policy. The favor granted, you returned to your abuse the soiv ilwt was waslied, to her wallowing in the mire.
The time expired,, you again appeared before the Deputies, not to verify your former promises, but to ask for a little increase of protection. This time you told many in consistent stories; but as they were matters of course, little was thought of them; and you were again favored. In a few years you were back again, supported by sister Conny and sister Rhody, who had got a sip of the pap upon which you fattened so lustily, and who had become as ravenous of it as yourself. Here was now exhibited to the world a sublime moral spectacle the Hartford Convention assembled at the City of Washington not " to take measures to protect their citizens from forcible draughts, conscriptions, and impressments," (so ourmilitary requisitions were called,) but modestly to request the American family-to tax themselves for the third time with increased severity, in order that this darling Triplet might do a money-making busi
ness. But I must conclude this long letter. I thought, when I commenced it, that it
Would, within less space, contain all that I had to say; but I find that it will not and to do you and myself justice, I must address you again. In the mean time, let me say to your children who have opposed your strange and wayward course, that so far from attaching blame to them, I look upon them as among the noblest, if not the very noblest spirits of the land. To stick to their country and to principle, amidst the influences which surround them, argues a moral character and a moral firmness, which deserves the highest praise, and, of course a better parentage.
Your injured sister,
GEORGIA.

L E TTE R I I.*
DEAR SISTER MASS :
You may remember that I left you, with your colleagues of the Hartford Convention, paying your third visit to Washington, in quest of protection. About this time the sisters of the South began to become impatient of your importunities, and to protest sternly against any further concessions to them; but you had now en listed so many in your favor, that you were gratified once more. Still in the prose cution of your suit, you preserved the semblance of modesty at least; though your spirit manifestly rose with your strength. It was not long before you were back again upon the same errand, with a strength that was irresistible. And now ensued a scene, which for the honor of my connexions, I blush to record. Your children thronged the Council-chamber, with an effrontery, which in mine, would cover me with shame, and demanded the old dish, according to their own recipes. Every
* As the letters which we have already received from Georgia contain some thing,-; which Mr. CALHOUN has said in substance, it may be well to remark that all of them were written before Mr. C. made his speech on the " Three Million Bill."

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XETTERFEOM

ingredient was weighed and measured by their own standards, and handed over to the Deputies to be cooked under their own directions. There was not a morse] of the compound suited to the Southern taste, save a few grains of sugar thrown in, to conciliate sister Louisa. Your son John (Q,) was selected to preside over the mingling and simmering process, and your son Dan, was " to do it up brown" with garnishments to his own taste. John, who is really a good man at heart wonder fully good, considering his origin and calling commenced his work : but before he had completed it, the better feelings of his nature repeatedly prevailed over his servility, and he was several times in the very act of ptltting in an element or two, to make it palatable, or at least, less offensive to the South, when the purveyors pounced down upon him like harpies, and compelled him to plumb the line of their prescriptions! It was passed through the furnace and finished to order.
Such scenes in the very temple of liberty, shocked and incensed the whole Sister hood of the South, and they talked boldly of seeking relief from this miscalled pro tection, by self-protection. At first, you tried to convert them to your faith, as you do the heathen, by a liberal distribution of tracts among them, in which you set forth the blessings of the tariff with peculiar force and ingenuity. But finding them incorrigible, you told them plainly, that the slave labor of the South should not come in competition with the free labor of the North; and you gave them to under stand, that if argument could not reduce them to order, Northern muskets would. My neighboring Sister Caroline, in the meantime, began to assume an alarmingattitude, and civil war or the fall of the tariff seemed the only alternative. This state of things found you at your old employment of abusing the government, but most of all, ANDREW JACKSON, who was then at the head of our affairs. Of all isnen in the country, this was the man against whom you had lifted up the warning 'voice loudest, and upon whom you had poured out your bitterest anathemas. As the clouds gathered and darkened over our political hemisphere, you threw your self into this man's arms. If he smiled, you tittered if he bent, you bowed if he threatened, you bristled and so fast, and all-confiding grew your friendships, in the course of a few weeks, that you moved to clothe him with almost despotic power, in order to meet the emergency. I say that you moved ; for your son Dan does no thing without your orders, expressed or implied. The cannons were loaded, the matches were lighted, and nothing was wanted, but the word "Jire," to deluge the country with blood, when, by the interposition of Mr. CLAY, a compromise was effected. I now flattered myself that this ever-inflaming subject was put to rest; and certainly it ought to have been ; for conceding the benefits of a protective tariff, It is but a matter of policy at last, and no demands of policy will justify a breach of faith. But this is not your ethics, Sister Mass, and it is with you alone that I have to do upon this occasion; though, as I said before, I shall not cover your faults, from courtesy to others who share them with you. The compromise was hardly effected before you began to throw out hints, (Irish hints) that you did not mean to abide by it. Who that knew you, supposed you would? I did not dream of it, though I hoped that others, more trust-worthy, would not permit you to violate it. Sofa" as I have been enabled to discover, you have never considered it as involving any higher moral obligation, than the concluding acknowledgements of a friendly epistle: " your most obedient, humble servant." Having brought you to this compro mise, which I had mainly in view in giving the history of the tariff, and in reach ing which, I followed the order of events directly connected with it, regardless of the order of time, let me now take up the history of some other compromises to which you were a party.
While the articles of oar confederation (which for the sake of brevity, we will hereafter call the Constitution.) were under discussion, a very knotty question arose, which had like to have defeated the Union. Considering the views of the parties at that time, it was a very curious one. You of the North considered slaves as mere chattels, and, therefore, not to be represented in the Common Councils. We f the South, admitted the fact, but drew an opposite conclusion from it, upon the ground that taxation and representation should be proportioned to each other. The

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

15

matter was compromised, and from that day to this you have been racking your in vention to get rid of the compromise. Your Hartford Convention drew up a series of resolutions, which you adopted and remitted to the Sisters, as proposed amend ments to the Constitution, among which was one to exclude slave representation. For the honor of the country, not a member of the confederacy, who was not at the concocting of these resolutions, adopted a single one of them. What you could not accomplish by direct means, you resolved to accomplish by indirect and less honora ble means. They are plainly visible, and are as follows: The first is, to leave the obnoxious clause untouched, but to stifle it by stretching other clauses over it. The second is, to crowd the master and the slave within such a narrow compass, that they cannot both live in it. The third (which is subservient to this,) is, to receive no new member into the Union, but upon the condition of her repudiating slavery. The fourth (which is of like character,) is, to stop all egress of slaves from their present limits; hence the refusal of yourself and your confederates to receive them when emancipated by their masters ; and hence your opposition to the Colonization Society. These are startling designs, Sister, to be conceived against those who spent their blood and treasure in defence of the liberty which.you enjoy ; but I shall not furnish you with a pretext for them by " blustering" over them, as I confess with shame, my children are too much in the habit of doing. And here I will disclose a family secret, which may be of service to you, not long hence, and which some of the members of some of the churches in your neighborhood may be able to avouch. It is this : So long as we bluster, yon have not much to fear ; but when you see our children looking calmly, with compressed lip and reddened cheek, at your encroachments, be assured there are perilous times at hand for all of us. And when once they gather for the flight, let them go you never can conciliate them afterwards. We are idolaters of the Union, and will bear much before we give it up; but only convince us that it is a golden calf which the profane grow rich by mutilating, and the devout grow lean by worshiping, and we will crush ,it to atoms, and grind it to powder with as little remorse as did Moses, the calf of old.
In pursuance of the plans just suggested, you opposed the admission of Missouri into the Union, except upon the condition of her renouncing slavery. Here was an unblushing infraction of the compromise you made when the Constitution was framed, and a direct violation of the spirit of that instrument, in all its provisions. A storm of course was raised, which was settled as usual by a compromise. So long have you been in the habit of breaking compromises, and so utterly indifferent to them have you become, that you cannot now wait for a suitable opportunity to break them; and you are at this moment engaged in breaking this last, .by anticipa tion. In the last war, you withheld your troops from the service of the country, and afterwards demanded pay from the government to the amount of more than a million of money, for their services in marching and counter-marching about in your own territory. In this war, you lay hold of the purse-strings of the nation, and vow you will never let go until you get a pledge from the whole family, that if we are not driven or starved out of Mexico, and if we should make a treaty with her, and if by the terms of that treaty she should stipulate to pay the expenses of the war, and her old debt, and if she should pay it in land, and if that land should be come settled, and become populous enough to be admitted into the Union, and claim to be admitted, without of its own choice objuring slavery it shall not be received into the Union.
This makes your conduct in the first war resplendently virtuous; but that any other Sister in the Union, without the case-hardening through which you have gone, should, at a single leap, reach the platform on which you stand, and ever raise her head afterwards, is, to me, inexpressibly amazing. In looking down to the far-off po sition which you occupy, I feel that you are entitled to some credit for your ingenu ity and enterprise in getting there; but as to your companions, they seem to me to have taken your character, only to add to it a new blemish namely, rashness. The determination which you have formed to allow no more slave territory to come into the Union, apart from the principle involved in it, is, of all movements of abo-

16

LETTER FROM

litionism, to me the most inoffensive. It seems to have thrown the Southern Sisters into a panic, and to have reconciled many of their children to a most disgraceful re treat from the war in which we are engaged. " Suppose/' cry they, "we should take all Mexico, don't you see plainly that it never can be admitted into the Union as slave territory?" What is the plain and obvious answer to all this? Why let it stay out of the Union,, by abolition votes, and let it remain common property as long as they choose so to vote. The controversy will be between the applicant and the abolitionist, and we will stand on the side of the former. She will renounce slavery or she will not. If she renounce slavery, there will be no difficulty in the matter; if she will not renounce slavery she remains a territory, to which all will have free access. As to the propriety or impropriety of the war itself, I have no thing to say, but to push its conquests just to the limits which the abolitionists pre scribe, and there stop, without treaty, without peace, without object ^because, for sooth, if we advance farther we may conquer territory, which may give rise to un pleasant difficulties is to surrender in advance more than we could lose by the threatened contest -to anticipate a breach of faith by removing at our expense the inducement to it, and to throw the honor of the nation and the army into the bar gain. If we do not conquer Mexico, will her territory ever become a part of the Union'?
Your abolition petitions, and your missions to Charleston and Orleans to stir up law suits about your black citizens, are part and parcel of the plans already exposed.
While you have been rushing on in your mad career, you have been unsparing in your abuse of me and my neighboring Sisters. I cannot call to mind that you ever breathed one kind sentiment, uttered one kind word, turned one kind look towards us. To Virginia, your elder Sister, and your great benefactor, you have been signally abusive and vindictive, because, to the sin of slavery, she has added the still greater sin, in your estimation, of exerting more influence in the councils of the nation, and producing more Presidents than any other member of the family. But " man-stealers," " kidnappers," " traders in blood," "tyrants," " murderers," are the common appellations by which we are introduced to the world by the devout, meek, gentle, lamb-like sons of the " Pilgrim Fathers." Engrave them, if you please, Sister, on Plymouth Rock, in this form:
MASSACHUSETTS,
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OP THE SERVICES RENDERED TO HER.,
BY HER BELOVED SISTERS:
MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA, SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA,
In Rescuing herfrom the Cruelties
OF AN UNNATURAL MOTHER,
Records upon this Consecrated Rock,
The distinguishing Virtues of these Affectionate Sisters:
MARYLAND The Man-Stealer.
VIRGINIA The Kidnapper.
NORTH CAROLINA The Trader in Blood.
SOUTH CAROLINA The Tyrant.
GEORGIA The Murderer.

And now what have we done, Sister, to merit this unkind treatment ? What would you have us do, to save ourselves from further injury and insult, and you, from further self-abasement ? There is but one answer to these questions, namely ; " You own slaves and you refuse to emancipate them." Well, let us discuss the matter calmly. I confess it will cost me a struggle' to do it, for reasons apparent through your whole history; but I think, for the country's sake, I can forget who you are and what you are long enough to discuss the subject with you not only calmly, but fairly.

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

17

I own slaves, and I sin in so doing. Suppose that this is all true ; now what must I do ? " Why, emancipate them of course.". Well., let us see, the end of this course.
I own two hundred and eightjr-one thousand slaves.* Of these, eighty-seven thousand five hundred are under ten years of age; two hundred, over a hundred years of age; and ten thousand, hetween fifty-five and a hundred. I set these two hundred and eighty-one thousand human beings free I proclaim liberty to these old and decrepid, these young and helpless. Among them are many sick, lame, blind, deaf and dumb. I set them adrift upon the world, houseless, breadless, penni less. Before the God who made you, Sister Mass, do you think this would be right 1 A month's time would bury nineteen-twentieths of them. " But you should send them away." Well, I turn to my benevolent Sisters, who are moving heaven and earth to abolish slavery, and not one of them will receive them. Oh! think of the RANDOLPH negroes, and try to think how I feel, at the abolition cry from. Ohio. " But send them to Africa" True ; I have no ships of my own, and I apply to you, the greatest ship-owner in the Union, to transport them for me. And you exclaim: " Be off! I am the most mortal enemy to Colonization on the Globe, and not a finger will I raise to promote it." 'f But keep them yourself, and
furnish them with the means of living." Exactly! For how long, Sister? Not more than a year, I suppose. As they could not embark in the learned professions, I must furnish them with an outfit for agriculture. You would not think a half pound of meat a day, and a peck of corn a week, an over allowance for each, would you ? Calculate the amount, if you please, Sister. But those capable of la bor must have at least ten acres of land apiece, I suppose. Of these there are one hundred and forty thousand. We must give them, therefore, one million four hun dred thousand acres. But they must have horses, ploughs, hoes, axes, &c., or the land will be of no avail to them; and they must be clothed for a year, besides. I intended to have calculated the amount in money of all these things; but this would consume unnecessary time. You can do it; and you will see, that to furnish these means my own children must be beggared. All this proceeds upon the sup position, you perceive, that when I free the slaves, I am bound to provide these freemen with a living. Upon this head I have my doubts; but that the care of them, in this way, would dissolve all my social relations, break up my commerce, my schools, my colleges, my churches in short, restore me to a state of nature, I have no doubt. Nor, if the clamorous Sisters of the abolition faith would receive them, could I endure the trouble and expense of transporting them nor could I possibly send them abroad, if I would. Now, when these things are spread out before you, and you shut your eyes to them, and still persist in your machinations and railing against me, to what conclusion must the most unbounded charity be
driven? We will reach it anon. Another long letter is written, and yet I have not concluded what I have to say !
Bear with me, Sister. I have permitted the account between us to run on for a long time, without a settlement; and, as is usual in such cases, it requires a longer
time to settle than either of us supposed. Your persecuted Sister,
GEORGIA.

* I here follow the census of 1840, for the sake of the relative ages.. The numbes

is now over 300,000.

.

18

XETTER FROM

LE TTE R III.

DEAR SISTER MASS :

\

la my last, I plainly showed you, how utterly impossible it was for me to

emancipate my slaves. Why, then, am I denounced and vilified by any one for

not doing it? But why are you among the number who thus treat me? Does it

become the Mother of Slavery to revile the Heir of Slavery ? Every non-slave-

)

holding Sister should sympathise deeply sympathize with me, seeing that none

of my children now living had anything to do with it in its inception. You all

agree that it is a great evil the direst curse that can befall a nation how, then,

should you all act to an innocent Sister, or, at least, to the innocent children of an

)

erring Sister, who is under the curse ? Imbitter it by harsh words and unkind treat

ment ? cut off her rights? withdraw from her societ)'? Will this mitigate its

>

sorrows? Will this remove it? Why, Sister, am I, who am only your acces

sory in guilt, and who became thus far implicated only under the sorest temptation

\

--why am I treated with less civility by you than the Turk, the Algerine, or the

Russian ? I hear of no efforts made by you to emancipate the slaves of these peo

ple, nor have I ever heard you speak harshly of them upon this score. This seems

to be adding cruelty unnatural, ungrateful, wanton cruelty to your usual in-

)

consistency.

Let us, in the next place, examine your system of warfare against Slavery. I

omit your town-meetings, and the agencies used in them, because they are all with-

i

in your legitimate prerogative ; they are good schools for declamation, and excellent

things for abolishing the distinctions of sex and color, while they are very harm

less to me. Your first plan is to disregard all compromises entered into upon this

subject, and to twist the Constitution out of joint as a part of this plan. Believe me,

Sister, a project thus begun, never can succeed. How shall I address to you the rea

sons for this opinion without seeming to calumniate you ? For myself, I look upon a

compromise, entered into for the peace of the country, as involving a sanctity which

is exceeded only by that which attaches to the communion and matrimonial vow. I

i

should instinctively recoil from the wretch who would ask me to violate it. I think

j

I might defy you to produce a case in which a clear breach of faith has ever been

i

productive of ultimate good to the party guilty of it. On the other hand, I could

i

produce hundreds, in which this conduct has been followed by the utter ruin of the

.*

perfidious party. When a cabinet council was held in France, in order to deliberate

/

upon the propriety of violating a treaty, the treaty was read to the members in

!

turn ; all gave their opinions to the King, in which they unfolded the great advanta-

;

ges that he would derive from violating it. After hearing them all through, the Duke

l

of Burgundy closed the conference by saying : " Gentlemen, there is the Treaty!'9

,

You must admire this sentiment, Sister, keen as is its reproof to you, unless, for

sooth, you have worked in kitchens so long that you have lost your relish for the

moral sublime.

',

But what shall we say to a deliberate infraction of a treaty made to bind together

/

in peace and harmony, the several members of one great family ! Surely, it is more

sacred than a treaty between distinct nations. Now, add to it the sanction of an

oath, which every member of the family \vho is called to the management of its

local or general concerns, is obliged to take } and then measure the extent of its ob

ligation if you can. To pervert its meaning, is to violate it in the worst of all ways.

To keep within the letter and to violate its spirit, is to cover perfidy with meanness.

You ask me indignantly whether I charge you with this vile conduct ? Why

no : not yet, at least. I am only speaking of your clearly revealed plans, and it is

possible that you may repent of them before you carry them into execution or,

which is more probable, you may be prevented from executing them.

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

19

Your next device is to contract the area of Slavery in the country. Ingenious as
you are, Sister, especially in the pursuit of money, if millions were staked on it, you could find but one object in this project, and it is this : to confine mas ,ers and servants to such a narrow territory, that in a little time they both cannot live on it.
Thus far I can follow you ; but what you hope for, when this point is reached, God only knows. At that point the whites must yield their territory to the blacks, and
move away ; or the whites must put the blacks, or the blacks must put the whites, to the sword. There is no other alternative j for, as you have seen, we could not
remove them now much less able will we be to do so then. Now, which of these issues do you yearn for, Sister? When I find all your sympathies on the*side of the blacks when I see them admitted to your pulpits and communion tables, and the whites excluded when I witness your exasperation at the whites, and hear your
ever streaming abuse of them, I am constrained to believe that you prefer the third
alternative that the blacks cut the throats of the whites. But when I hear you avowing that slave labor shall not come in competition with free labor that no ter
ritory shall be added to the country, into which the free born sons of the North will have to commingle with the slaves of the South with much more, which implies
that the blacks, in your estimation, are a degraded race, not to be put on a level with whites I am led to infer that when the throat-cut*ing tragedy comes off, you hope to see the whites the victors. Whatever you may desire, this will certainly be
the end of that drama; and if you really sympathize with the slaves, you could not pursue a worse policy than to contract the area upon which the two races are to live, until want drives them to war. As to our giving the slaves our possessions,
and movingr to the free States, that, of course, will not be done ; and if it were done, they would soon all perish. The only rational conclusion that I can draw from your
conduct in this regard, is that you care for neither master nor slave, and that the
true aim of this circumscribing policy is to weaken the power of slaveholders in the
councils of the nation. This conclusion is strengthened by niany considerations : your many complaints
of that power your attempts to reduce it during the last war your opposition to the Colonization Society your refusal to give a dollar to free the slave from bond age your contempt of him when put in comparison with Northern freemen the little encouragement you give him to come to your land the coldness with which
you treat the black who does go there and the few privileges you allow him when he gets there. To reconcile such conduct, with either respect for the master or hu
manity to the slave, is beyond my ingenuity. And yet to suppose any being capa
ble of such utter abandonment, as thisc>nclusion would imply, for the paltry purpose of gaining a little brief authority, is to suppose that Vice has yeaned anew, and
brought forth a monster that startles even Vice herself. I pray you, Sister, have mercy upon your reputation for justice, truth or sanity. Do not so speak, and so act as to bring them all in question ; or to make them bring each other in question. If you really would emancipate the slave, without affecting the master, extend the area
of slavery as widely as possible. Remember, if you please, (what I should be ashamed to confess my ignorance of,) that to extend the area of slavery, is not to in crease the number of slaves. It is not to increase their burdens. Just the reverse.
By as much as you widen the field of slavery, by so much do you increase the pro portion of whites to blacks within its limits. By as much as this proportion is in creased, by so much isthe divisor of ownership increased, and the fewer must be the number which each white man will own- The fewer that each owns, the better will
he treat them the more certainly will he instruct them, and the more ready will he be to emancipate them. 1st, because be will have a warmer regard for them, from
his closer intimacy with them, and 2d, because he can do it at a less sacrifice. Sure
ly, there is no refinement or subtlety in this reasoning. Every body knows that the man who owns but three slaves, treats them better than does the man who owns fifty
or a hundred. And if the whole number could be divided in the proportion of three
to one, every man in the country would liberate his slaves, and give them a start in the world. the moment that he could supply their places with white servants. For veri-

20

LETTER FROM

ly, Sister, most of my children are just as sick of them as you are of their masters,

and their masters are of you. But the proportion must in a short time become even,

less than this. If no man in the country had more than one slave, slavery must be

soon abolished ; and while the whites Increase faster than the slaves, the tendency T

under the common statutes of distributions, must ever be to this state of things. As

to the cry that your free born sons will not mingle with slaves, it is like most of

your cries opposed to the evidence of your senses. They do mingle with them r-

and it is against them, your own blood, as well as mine, that you are pouring out the

vials of your wrath, and meditating destruction. So much for your aims, and the

tendency othem. Let us now look to the fruits of them, so far as they have beet*

gathered.

First.--You have paralized the Colonization Society; an Institution which united

North and South, in the laudable enterprise of abolishing slavery without periling

freedom, of blessing the black man without cursing the white, of seperating master

and servant by a power which drew their hearts together as it drew their bodies asun

der, and of changing the civil relations of the country, without violence to the consti

tution, or intrusion on either side. I have asked myself, why did God permit an Insti

tution which promised so much good, to be the first victim of a fell spirit which threat

ened so much evil? Am I to take it as an indication of his favor, to these self-

infurated fanatics 1 And I have found consolation, if not truth in the answer : that

on this wise has he often permitted his own most benevolent designs to be met by

the worms for whose benefit they were intended. Even our. holy religion began

with the crucifixion of its great Head, and the martyrdom of his disciples. He was

of the seed of Abraham 1 And who was Abraham 1--Be not alarmed Sister, I am

not going to speak of his household, but his progeny Who was Abraham ? The

man to whom the second promise of the Messiah was made; the father of the peo

ple to whom the Old Testament dispensation was committed. But how strange its

beginning! Its dawn found that very people in the most abject slavery ihat ever

afflicted man at least, so I understand the Scriptures. A slavery foreordained by

God himself, and continued for centuries. A strange precursor of the light which

these people were to spread through the world! From these things, and others to

which I might advert, I infer that the shock which the Colonization Society has

received, is no proof that God does not mean to prosper it yet; or that he does mean

to prosper the Vandalism which laid violent hands upon it. May it rise again with

renewed vigor and strength, and may the good of all latitudes sustain it and defend

it, as the ark of our political covenant. I am strengthened in the opinion just ad

vanced by the fact that Abolitionism, after nearly thirty years' travail, has not yet

produced even a mouse. Not a man has it liberated not a blessing has it pro

duced.

Secondly.--You have severed the Churches, and thus, at one blow, cut the nerves

of Protestantism, and the strongest bond of the Union. I speak of the first conse

quence, not as a Sectarian, but to a Sectarian, a recruiting sergeant of the Anti-

Slavery League

(1 have this moment read the announcement that the WIL-

MOT proviso has passed the House of course, I am not in a frame of mind to write

temperately. Excuse me, until the return of better feelings. There you are, Mass,

first in the breach of the Constitution^) Nearly a day has rolled away, and

I am again prepared to resume my letter.

You have sundered the Churches, and thereby produced a state of feeling as unpro-

pitious to the cause of religion, as your political movements have been to the stabili

ty of the Union. And here I find great encouragement, in view of the revolution

which your abolitionism is soon to produce.

In every instance in which we have dissolved our association with you, our peace

and happiness have been greatly promoted. Can you say as much, Sister?

Thirdly.--You have forced yourself almost entirely from the affections of your

Southern Sisters, and led them to look with a cold, suspicious eye upon all your

children who come hither. Many who would have received a hearty welcome years

ago, and have been promptly introduced into a lucrative business, now wander

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS. .

21

about among us, with their pockets full of flattering1 certificates, seeking employment and finding none. Some of these are doubtless of that noble class, of whom I spoke at the conclusion of my first letter ; hut we do not know them and your sin descends in penalties upon their hesds. But here I forget who I am talking to. You who are plotting the ruin of your own offspring, largely mixed with mine, without feel ing or remorse, would rejoice at the discomfiture of those who have ventured to op pose you at your own doors. Would that I could know such! They should re ceive my highest honors and my warmest affections.
Fourthly.--You have really rendered yourself contemptible to many of the slaves themselves. Of this I could give you some striking proofs. Forty years ago any thing looking to the emancipation of our slaves, was spoken of only in whispers, and was printed only ia asterisks ; now, we all talk as openly and freely about the abolitionists and their aims, as we do of almost any other subject. The truth isj they have heard so long, and so much about abolitionism, and seen so little good result from it that they begin to think that you really care nothing for them, or that your friendship is not worth having. The soundest philosophy that ever emanated from a negro's brain.
Fifthly.--You have spread your incendiary principles abroad, and with them the spirit which you breathed into them, until your proselytescan overleap the barriers of the Constitution, with as litile scruple as you feel in violating common promises. You smile at their proficiency, not perceiving that you are breaking down the only safeguard which you have from, the fast growing power of the West, and establish ing precedents which will come in vengeance upon you at no distant day. Not per ceiving that you are puttingthe scourge., of which you have been complaining for forty years, into hands from which you never can wrest it again. Believe me, Sis, it will not be long before you will want the help of the much abused South, against whom you have been practicing your political witchcraft and diabolical incantations with so much success. You admit, do you., the power of Congress to say what must be the character of the people, and what their private relations, and what con ditions they must have in their Constitution, before they can be admitted into the Union. Very well. For the poor consolation of being thought, by and by, wiser than my very shrewd and self-conceited Yankee Sister, permit me to enter my sol emn protest against this novel, startling, revolutionary doctrine. By the Shade of HAMILTON, your Mentor in politics, and MADISON, mine---joint architects of the .splendid politicalfabric under which we live--Iprotest against it! I pronounce it an .open, flagrant violation of a double obligation--the Missouri Compromise and the Constitution.
What would have been thought of the man, who, when North Carolina con sented te come into the Union, should have proposed to exclude her, on the ground of her owning slaves 1 Nothing could have saved him from universal execration, but the plain indication in the proposition itself, that the man was deranged. But such is abolitionism, which regards no law human or divine. Of all the maladies that ever seized on man, it is the most remarkable. It is a disease in which there are no stages no gradations. Its first symptoms are, a dethronement of the reason, a deadening of the sympathies, an oblivion of friendships, and abandonment of shame, a forgetfulness of vows, an extinction of patriotism, a recklessness of consequences, and a rabid fury, which knows neither bounds nor decency. Its victim is no sooner seized than he springs up like a galvanized corpse glares horribly upon his guilt less friends banishes them from his heart strikes down his compatriot raves at his Christian brother snatches the eucharistie elements from his hand- drives him from the pulpit strips him of his official robes appropriates his contributions spends them for weapons to wound him rushes to the arms of the negro then screams out i( that he is ruled by slaves" and calls on Anarchy, in the name of Jus tice, to absolve him from their tyranny. Approach him kindly, and he insults you. Ask him what you must do for him, and he is mute. Tell him you know not what to do, and he gives you the lie direct. Administer to his cravings, and he craves the more. Deny what^he asks, and he usurps it. He seems to believe hjmself

22

LETTER FROM

clothed with the prerogatives of Heaven and earth. He gives new versions of the Scriptures, never before heard of, and changes old ones, which have stood undoubted for eighteen hundred and three thousand years. He stands at the door of the tem
ple, and says who may go in and who may not. He proclaims who are worthy to mingle in the congregations of the Saints and who are not. He anathematises whole nations, leagues and hundreds of leagues off, who are quietly pursuing their own business and their own devotions. He calls fellowship,/<w;or courtesy, condescen sion--privileges, concessions ; and with an arrogance, that despotism would blush to assume, he proclaims what in Church and State he will tolerate, and what he will never allow! He feeds and fattens on what he professes to abhor, and drives from his borders what he professes to love. With the eye of the eagle by day, and of the owl by night, he pries into kitchens, quarters and shanties, for something to snap at; and when driven hence, he sets up a pitious howl of persecution. He shrieks out at slavery, and calls on the Catholic to help Mm crush it. He shrieks out at Popery, and calls on the slave-holder to help him crush it then hurls a fire brand into the habitation of the one, and the Church of the other. He begs, and abuses his government stretches its power and rebels against it. receives its lajrsresses, and strikes at its pillars. And, what is not the least remarkable circumstance attending this unheard of malady, the world seems to consider the name of it a suffi cient apology for all its extravagances. *f He is an Abolitionist," covers all guilt, quiets all fear, excuses all insults, pardons all injuries. At home and abroad, on sea and on land, in peace and in war, in trade and in treaties, Abolitionism must receive the first courtesies, and then the interests of the nation.
Such are the fruits of Abolitionism, and such is Abolitionism itself. Its promises in my next. In the meantime be it remembered, that the coun try owes it to you, as it does mainly, the servitude which it was intended to remove. Thus, by your lust, you engendered a disease, which, by your quackery, you have turned into a cancer.
Your outraged Sister,
GEORGIA.

LETTER IV.
DEAR SISTER MASS :
Having shown you what abolitionism has produced, I ana now to show you what it loill produce. It will produce a dissolution of the Union ! This is in evitable, unless God interposs to arrest its progress ; for it is manifest that this, or destruction, is the only alternative left to the South. She has tried to arrest its pro gress by threats, (poor expedients,) concessions and; compromises; and they have produced no other effect than to embolden aggression. Nearly twenty years ago, one of my sons told his brethren in particular, and the sons of the South in general, to quit their party wrangling, for a time at least, and to unite in some precautionary measures against Abolitionism. He told them to draw a line which they all could agree upon, and say to the abolitionists, as with the voice of one man, " the moment you reach that limit we leave you for ever." As that, when slavery should be abolished in the District of Columbia or when a certain number of abolitionists, should get into Congress or when that body passed the first act in relation to slavery or anything else that would enable the abolitionist to know before hand just how far he might go, and the South to move in a body as soon as he overstepped the limits. The same person said that abolitionism would inevitably grow, and grow rapidly, at the North that the pious would espouse it from principle, and the politician from interest; and that, as soon as it became general at the North, noth ing could keep it from oppressing the South intolerably, but the assurance that the-

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

23

destruction of the IJnion would be the consequence. There was but one way of giving that assurancej and that was the one proposed. Without this, encroachment would follow encroachment, and every one would find us split into parties, one or another of which would be forever making apologies for these inroads, and paralyz ing opposition to them. That consequently there would be no concert, no harmony of action among us a little blustering, a little fuming, and a little threatening, and the ground usurped would be quietly surrendered. In the mean time, our oppres sors would become convinced by our conduct that they might advance upon our rights with bolder strides. They already calculated largely upon our fears, and they would soon calculate more largely upon our distractions; and thus encouraged, they would go on from outrage to outrage, until we could indure gno longer, and then, with per haps the puise, the army and the navy of the nation in their hands, they would tell us to submit to their dictation, or the sword, as we pleased. Then they were only experimenting upon our fears and love of the Union, (a hellish experiment to be sure, for kinsmen to try upon kinsmen,) but soon they would trust to their power ; and what was power when exerted to inforce man's notions of the edicts of Heaven, every body knew. He was pronounced a restless alarmist who was endeavoring to make political capital out of abolition folly ; but most of his prophecy has already t>ecome history; and whether it will not all become so very soon, depends, so far as man can foresee, upon whether there is virtue enough in the country to arrest you and your colleagues in your lawless crusade ; and I confess with mortification that I have but little hope from this quarter. Your frenzy then, will probably end in the dissolution of the Government " And Madam," you will add, " in your ruin."
And, Madam, suppose this true would that afford you any gratification ? I verily believe it would; for unprovoked malignity and persecution are never satisfied, until
they see their victim at the rack or the stake. But let us calmly examine this thing. We shall hardly separate before we shall
be involved in war. The aggressions which drive off the South will not cease at the separation; they will rather be more flagrant, because wrath will then take the place of sophistry, on the strong side, and that wrath will be stimulated by envy at the peace and prosperity of the South, and by disappointment of all your expectations as to the result of your mischievous projects. War will probably ensue. But it will be a war in which the South will be united to a man, and emboldened by the thorough conviction that they have been the objects of unrelenting persecution and oppression. The North, on the other hand, will be divided. There will be a vast difference in paying the expenses of a war out of your own pockets, and paying it out of Uncle Sam's, especially when your revenue is to be collected from your own foreign commerce. Withal, very many of your people even now see that yon are decidedly in the wrong; and many abolitionists, when they see the results of your course, will wake from the dream into which your oily tongued politicians have lulled them. Voting down slaveholders, and tutting down slaveholders, will be very dif ferent things to them.
As for you, Sister Mass., you will be the very first to bolt from the war-party. You never have supported your country in a war, and you never will: for this plain reason, that it always brings your love of money and your love of country in direct conflict; or, if I mistake the reason, the fact is enough for my purpose, as I think yon are now too old to change your habits. With us it will be victory or death with you, it will be only victory or disgrace ; and as by that time victory will cost you something, and disgrace nothing, your own good sense would lead you to choose the latter. We will be united, then, and you will be divided. We will be on the right side and you on the wrong. This, to my mind, settles the issue of the war at once. " But you would have the marine, and you would lay hands upon our cotton, rice and tobacco." Not so fast, Sister. About this time, when your factories are shut up, and your " free labor" is in the field, yoa will be amazed to see how the Abolitionism of England cools. She will be exceedingly respectful to you as her old ally in benevolent enterprises; but then she will tell you, that she never thought of abolishing slavery in any other way, than by the moral agencies of reli-

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gion and diplomacy ; and that conscience never will permit her to engage in a way which is not in someway, at least, subservient to these blessed instrumentalities such as keeping people from suicide by opium, and the like. " She will, therefore, observe the strictest neutrality between the contending parties, and take great plea
sure in conducting their foreign tjade for them, until such time as they could resume its direction themselves wilh convenience. And here she would be governed by the, strictest rules of impartiality. If she carried two millions of bales of cotton for her unfortunate friends of the South and Southwest, she would, with equal pleasure, carry two millions of sacks of corn for her particular friends of the North, and West ^ and two millions of bales of Lowells for her favorites of New England. If she carried an hundred and twenty thousand hogsheads of tobacco for the first, she would carry as many barrels of flour for the second, and as many quintals of fish for the third. If she carried an hundred and,eighty-seven thousand hogsheads of sugar for the first, she would carry as many bushels of wheat for the second, and as many casks of cheese for the third. If she carried eighty thousand tierces of rice for the first, she would carry as many hogsheads of bacon for the second, and as many firkins of butter for the third. Beyond this, however, she could not go."
"But we would blockade your ports, and thf,n what would you do ?" Why.,, then, the British carrying trade must stop her cotton factories must stop, and an immense trade must be stifled. She would, therefore, tell you, " that while she was ever disposed to respect the rights of beligerents, yet when the conduct of one of the parties was so manifestly leveled at her interest, she never could submit to it, unless it was in the strictest conformity to the law of nations. If, therefore, you did not put a force at every Southern port greater tban she could put there, then you would be considered without the pale of that principle of international law, which considers no blockade valid unless it be by a force sufficient to sustain the blockade. But still, as her sense of justice always weighed down every other con sideration in her estimation, and as the question might be settled by the best of arguments, a practical experiment, she would propose to you to try the force of your one seventy-four and three frigates, against her eight seventy-four's. And if your force proved sufficient to sustain the blockade, why then with all courtesy she would yield her trade and her factories, in deference to the law of nations."
But all this is upon the supposition, that upon the division, you help yourselves as your churches have done, to all the joint property. But this may not be the case. What your best men have already done (or plainly mean to do,) it is very natural, you may wish to do ; but then there is such a mixture of officers and mea from, both sections, in the army and navy, and the several departments of State, and such a dispersion of the joint property all over the Union, that in the scramble we should be certain to get some. All the ports and arsenals within our limits of course we should get; and in the breaking up, the chances fur the army and navy would be in favor of that side on which justice lay : for these servants of the nation at large have none of your abolition notions. They would lean to the side of the injured party; or at least they would be apt to divide according to their domestic relations.
Let us now come to the battle field. Here you think you would have greatly the advantage of us, because you look only at the numerical strength of the two parties. But what is numerical strength in modern warfare 7 Absolutely nothing, where both parties can carry to the field more than either can support there. We can muster into the field an army five times as large as Buonaparte conquered half Eu rope with, five times as large as Alexander conquered the world with, and larger than any nation upon the face of the globe ever carried to the field, save one ; and that one was whipt by a little band, no braver than the Texan Rangers. It is almost a year since wa: was declared against Mexico, and yet with the whole numerical force of the Union at command, we have but a little over twenty thousand men in arms between the Rio Grande and the Pacific. The Government is already, even in the midst of victory, not a little embarrassed for means to carry it on; and many (you, as ever, among the foremost,) are complaining bitterly of the expenses of this war. You and your confederates would not hope to conquer me and mine with-an army

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less than five times as large as this. You could not expect to organize such an army, put it under marching orders, and reach the Southern frontier in less than four months from the time you begin. Now, four months, counting two at thirty, and two at
thirty one days, each, make one hundred and twenty-two days; and your own most distinguished son tells us, that the present war costs the country a half mil
lion per day. Now, if twenty thousand men give a half a million per day, a hun dred thousand men will give two millions and a half per day ; or three hundred and five millions for one hundred and twenty-two days. That is to say, Sister, three
hundred and five millions, before the first shot is fired. But, as we could bring into the field one hundred and fifty thousand men with the greatest ease, you could
hardly hope to conquer us short of seven years. The expenses of a seven year's war, at your son's rates, would amount to six thousand three hundred and eightyseven millions five hundred thousand dollars. How do you think you could stand
that, Sister? But suppose our one hundred and fifty thousand should, by good luck, happen to conquer your one hundred thousand; why then you would have to recruit your army with new levies to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand in all. Now, when we saw you coming with one hundred and fifty thousand, we
would meet them with two hundred thousand, and the same fortune might attend our arras as before. In the mean time, with a debt of six thousand three hundred and eighty-seven millions five hundred thousand dollars, and equipments to be fur nished de novo, it would be very inconvenient for you to get up and support the new levies long enough to get to the battle-field. Do you not perceive, then, that to presume upon your numbers, is very great folly ? Certainly the Southron
who entertains any fears upon that head, must be a very great coward, or a very great simpleton. " But there is your internal foe ; what would you do with that ?''
I answer, just keep it making supplies for the army. No man who is acquainted
with the feelings and condition of this people, could suffer one moment's uneasiness, if you were to come to our borders and blow the blast of freedom as loud as three fold thunder. I will put the case in the strongest possible light. Suppose, instead
of our advancing to meet you upon your own territory, we allow you to advance into the very heart of Virginia, and that from every plantation that you pass, and
from all others within three miles of you, you gather recruits of field-hands. Do you suppose, that ten, twenty and fifty miles from your track, there would be any insurrection at all ? You may rest assured there would not be; for the plain and obvious reason, that these people can form no concert of action; and to rise by
households or plantations at a time, without any arms, without discipline, without
plan, would be to insure their destruction a truth which, if they did not foresee, they would soon learn from the fate of those who should attempt a revolt. I put out of view all feeling of attachment from these people to their owners, which in thou sands, and tens of thousands of instances, would be.a certain guaranty against hos
tility from them under any circumstances. All that your armies could pick up and take care of, might follow you; but no more, my word for it. This is not mere specu lation ; it has been twice demonstrated by actual experiment. During the Revolu
tionary War, the British were all through our country. Masters, for a time, of most of the territory of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia; but such a thing as the slaves taking sides against their masters, I never heard of. But I heard of thousands of instances, wherein they served them in battle, took care of the wives and children, bore them away from peril, (sometimes on their own backs,) kept watch for their safety, bore tidings of them; to their masters by night, and per
formed ten thousand kind offices to them besides. During the last war, the British were all along my coast, landing when they would and where they would ; and
yet no one ever heard of a revolt of slaves occasioned by their presence or encour agement. They took off some, to be sure, and so might you, if you felt disposed to.
burden your armies with them ; but the moment you dismissed them, to take care of themselves, that moment would they begin to perish, or go back to their masters; These facts should satisfy any reasonable being, that a revolt of the slaves is not at
all to be dreaded. No people, profoundly ignorant of government, with no settled

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rights of property, with no means of defence, with no means of subsistence, with no confidence of security, could gain or hope to gain anything by flinging off their vassalage. Negroes know this, or what is the same thing, instinct teaches it to them. Your people, Sister, are lamentably ignorant of the true condition of this people lamentably ignorant of their views and feeling; and, what is worse, you are wilfully ignorant of them, and (worse still,) you are maliciously ignorant of them. The history of the South is just precisely the history of the world in this regard. Slavery has existed in every nation upon the earth more dangerous slavery far, than ours ; yet we hardly ever hear of its being taken into the account of war, by any nation, and as seldom of its ever embarrassing a war in any way. But I have put the case too strong. If we come to the fighting point, we will not show the indif ference to your arms that we have shown to your envy and your insults we will not be as slow to resist your physical, as we have been to resist your moral (or ra ther immoral) encroachments. The first battle, I predict, will not be fought on slave-territory.
Now, remove all danger of insurrection, and I think you will have to admit, that instead of being as you suppose, the weakest people in the world, we are the strong est people in the world. This is reducible almost to a demonstration. To illustrate it, let us suppose (as we can without an effort) that half your population were like the beasts, birds, and reptiles of Egypt, i. e. held sacred. That neither your friends nor your foes would under any circumstances, molest them. That they labored in dustriously from year's end to year's end, in the production of the most valuable com modities m the world, and that they gave all the profits of their industry, beyond a bare support to the other half would not this half, other things being equal, be the most invincible people on the face of the globe ? Most assuredly they would j for the unanswerable reason, that every man of them might take the field, without abstracting a scruple from the care and support of his family, the annual productions of the country, its agriculture, commerce, or manufactures. Who might not well afford to go to war, when others bore the expenses of it! Now, with the qualifica tion just mentioned, (and which I think just no qualification at all,) we are precisely in this situation. Almost ever since the government was established, from a half to three fourths of the foreign commerce of the country has been sustained by South ern productions; productions, which left free to seek their own markets, and the revenues of which confined within our own limits, would make us as rich as we are powerful. If all foreign commerce were cut off, all our efficient industry might be turned to raising provisions and clothing for the army. But how is it with you, Sister ? To go to war you must take your men from their families, turn your pro ductive industry to consuming industry close up your redundant factories dis mantle your shipping, and with your means of paying, thus reduced, accumulate an enormous debt upon your shoulders not as great, I grant you, as I made it upon your son's data, by four-fifths; but far too great for you to endure. This, too, is a fact established by history. You pronounced yourself ruined by the war of 1812, when it was not a year old, and you pointed to your useless shipping, by which you had lived, as the proof. Hence it is, and only hence, that you ever have complained, and ever will complain of war. What nonsense is it then, for you to be bullying us with your freemen. The lion's skin cannot make the wearer a lion, as fable shows.
All these things have I known for many years past but knowing my sons to be too impetuous any how, and that many of them thought of the issues of a war be tween us, as you think of them that their error in this regard tended to the peace of the country, and to the perpetuity of that union which I revered as the ark of our safety, the pledge and the proof of our glory and our greatness, and the monu ment of our wisdom, I have hitherto forborne to disclose them. But the time has come, when silence in this regard becomes cowardice, and forbearance a decoy to you, treason to the country, desertion of my children, and desecration of the most holy relics of our fathers. By your magic art, a spirit has been waked up which baffles all description, and all philosophy. This , what shall I call it? verily
I am, afraid to designate it. I was going to say "hell-born" but it seems to have

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too much religion in it for that. "Enthusiasm?" It has too much of perdition in it for that .this Massachusetts^, this satanie puritanism, this puritanic satanism, is laying waste all that is great, and glorious, and good, and beautiful and love ly, in our Heaven befriended land. The bonds of religion, patriotism, kindred and party, all snap at its touch. Reason is lost on it, persuasion insults it, endurance provokes it. There is but one expedient left; which is to hold up the mirror of the future before it, and if this will not stay its onward march, why, then let it come; and when it shall have completed its work, and Despotism shall smile over its ruins, and exclaim, "I told you so!" I, at least, can reply with a clear conscience, e( thou canst not say I did it."
Your indignant Sister, GEORGIA.

LETTER V.
MADAM,
When I took up the pen for the first time to address you, I had not the most distant idea of extending my remarks beyond the limits of one or two letters at farth est ; and here am I at the fifth. Well, bear with me ; I have never troubled you before, and I do not expect ever to trouble you again.
I have brought your history down to the present time, and I have foreshown you the dreadful end of it. In so doing, I have often had to trace your windings through good company, who honestly espoused your principles or rather your opinions and who may perhaps feel themselves implicated by what I have said of you. If so, they do both themselves and me injustice. I have noticed your conduct in these connections only to show its peculiar features in you ; such as cruelty, vindictiveness, inconsistency, ingratitude, arid the like; and not to censure it per se. T^hus, I have noticed your conduct during the last war, not because you opposed it, much less to cast reflections upon any who oppose this, but to show the mode and manner of your opposition the unreasonableness of it, in the mother of half the impressed seamen of the country and the unblushing confidence, not to say effrontery, with which you turned it to your own private and special interest; but moie especially to show the precise time and place, at which you formed the resolution to crush the slave power at the South, or to crush the Union. This was one of the leading ob jects of the Hartford Convention, as one of its resolutions proves, and hence the per fect identity in policy and pursuit of the Trio who formed it. All since has been merely in subservience to this plan. This much, however, I will venture to say, that to oppose this war, or any other, declared by the constituted authorities of the country, by withholding the means necessary to a successfyilprosecutiimofit, argues a pride or an obstinacy of opinion, which extinguishes every noble and patriotic feel ing of the human heart, and even this kind of oppression is magnanimous, w&en com pared with that of Mr. WJUVIOT.
I have adverted to your fawning on the Government for protection, not to east re flections upon those who honestly espouse the restrictive system, (among whom are some of the wisest and the best) but to show your bearing and daring through the whole progress of the system. I meant to hold up the Arch-Abolitionist to the eyes: of the world in her true character; and I did not mean to allow her to escape expo sure by getting into genteel company. I think I see plainly that the days of this great and giorious Republic are numbered that it is soon to become the victim of one of the most frightful, disgusting monsters, that ever reared its head among a Christian people. I consider you the mother of it; and I wish to leave your portrait to our common offspring, that they may know its lineage from its resemblance to its

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parent. The time has come, I conceive, when you should be taught that forbearance is not insensibility, that courtesy is not cowardice, nor charity servility. These pearls your Southern Sisters have been casting before you ever since you breathed the air of freedom; and they have reaped the reward which, with the light before them, they might have expected. Verily, Madam, the indulgence of the family to your failings has been your ruin, as it is likely to be their own. Had your plots against the Government, in 1813, been properly rebuked, your influence upon it would not have been as mischievous as it has been since. Had your Abolitionism been properly met fifteen years ago, it would not now be riding over Church and State, with Turkish indifference, Vandal cruelty, and Cretean perfidy. How comes it to pass that, with only occasional bursts of indignation from the halls of Congress, when your intrusions became insufferable, reiterated by a few partisan editors, you have been treated with uniform deference and respect by the whole Sisterhood ? How happens it that the " chivalrous South," that "high-minded and spirited peo ple" of whom we hear so much and see so little, have borne your encroachments and your insults so long and so patiently, with scarcely a word of recrimination, and with scarcely a glance of contempt after the injury was inflicted ? ' I do not wonder, pet ted as you have been, and indulged as you have been, that you have at last become intolerable. And how is this to be accounted for 1 I will tell you. The people of the South are really not wanting in the virtues which they claim for themselves though greatly wanting in prudence, when they become their own criers of them especially to you, who have small dealings in these wares, though you deal largely in everything e!se. They love the Union, as I have said, almost to idolatry. All the nobler feelings of their hearts gather round it. They will therefore bear much, rather than do anything that may weaken its bonds; they will bear almost every thing rather than, give it up. Withal, they are a courteous and confiding people, All this you know; and as you are as vigilant of the moral world, to see what can be made out of it, as you are of the physical, you have fixed the screws upon these noble affections, and you have been calmly twisting them for thirty years, to see how far they will stretch, and how much they will bleed before they will snap. Hence our people bear and forbear, they shriek and solicit, they denounce and forgive, they hope against hope, they appeal to your mercy, your justice, your patriotism, your promises everything, rather than level a blow at you that may recoil upon the Union. Duly to appreciate this experiment, you must suppose a physician at the bed-side of a dy ing child, with the sanative in his hand, and the tortured mother, begging for it her monny gone, her jewels gone, the hallowed braid, the bridal ring and yet the wretch unsatisfied. Here is the secret of their concessions and their courtesies to
you; and I beseech you by your purse, do not mistake them. And now, having closed your history, I have again and again, run my mind's eye
over your life, to see if I could not find one magnanimous, noble, generous act to re lieve its dark shading; and I cannot find one. If I could, I certainly would give you credit for it; for it would be wanton cruelty to do you injustice, when justice itself is little else than unmitigated castigation. You have erected a monument to be sure; and what barbarian has not done that? But what barbarian ever be fore raised a monument in honor of his ancestors, at the very moment when he was polling down the most magnificent and hallowed structures of those very ancestors ? What barbarian ever before commemorated by a monument the valor of his sires, at the very moment when he was proclaiming to the world, that the only fruit of that valor, was a government of slaves, hostile to the laws of God and nature, and achieved by the joint labors of their fathers and manstealers? Even your monument is a de ception ; for it does not indicate the true feelings of the builder. Had you taken the stones of it from your father's sepulchres, and ground up their bones to make the cement of it, it would have been a more truthful remembrancer. Then it would have proclaimed to unborn generations, the heroism of your ancestors, and theapostacy of their children. " There it stands !" exclaimed your son, triumphantly; when probably some of the very blood that it covered, would have been considered
pollution to any pulpit in Boston. I, too, have erected a monument. Its place is in

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the heart of my first and principal city, and the names which it perpetuates are ste reotyped upon the hearts of my children. The one is GREENE, the noble son of that ignoble mother, the dwarf of the Hartford Convention she who now wars upon the land that contains his relics, and who would deny his children the common rights of American citizens. But when I launch a curse at her, which shall light upon him when I come to treat the slaves of GREENE, with more respect than the child ren of GREENE when I defame the land from which I draw my chief supportWhen I yoke myself to a Jezebel, in her unholy war upon God's servants, God's altars, and man's most hallowed shrines may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ! The other is PULASKI, the dis tinguished Pole, who fell in defence of the city which now embosoms his cenotaph. His Mother, too, was set upon by tyrants, who first massacred and then quartered her. In her death-struggle, I did not justify her enemies and condemn her.* I did not solemnly declare that to honor her heroes with praise for their victories, would be " an encouragement to an unjust, unnecessary, and iniquitous war ;>:f but I gave her my tenderest sympathies, my heart's warmest affections, and a son in her troubles, as she gave me.J I mention these things not in the spirit of boasting, but that the

* During the war of 1812, Governor STRONG, of Massachusetts, in one of his Mes sages held this language, which was cordially approved by an overwhelming majority of the Legislature : " No State in the Union can have a greater interest, or feel a stronger desire to protect Commerce, and maintain the legitimate rights of Seamen, than this Com monwealth. Owners of one-third of all the navigation, and furnishing one-half of all the seamen, fyc." " Great Britain only claims the right of taking her own sub jects from neutral vessels. In doing this, from similarity of lanauage, our citizens have
been sometimes subject to impressment. But, so far as I have heard, they have been discharged, when application was made in their behalf, AND EVIDENCE FURNISHED oF THEIR CITIZENSHIP. In some instances there may have been a wanton exercise of power by impressing officers, but it is impossible for the best regulated State wholly to control the action of its subjects, fytf." " She asserts that her seamen are essential to her safety ; that though they are not liable to be taken from our national ships, and we have a right to protect them, while they remain within our territory; yet, if they pass into her dominions, or if, in transacting their own affairs on the highway of nations they come within her power, she has a right to take them by virtue of her prior claim that she never can relinquish the right, so long as we employ her seamen, without endangering the existence of her Navy. What hope of a peace, then, can reasonably be entertained, when such a SACRIFICE is required of her ?" This from the mother of half the impressed seamen of the country, and the employer of half the British seamen onboard our vessels!
tOn the 13th June, 1813, the Senate of Massachusetts passed the following resolution : " Whereas, a proposition has been made to this Senate for the adoption of sundry reso lutions, expressive of their sense of the gallantry and good conduct exhibited by Cap tain JAMES LAWRENCE, Commander of the United States ship of war Hornet, and the officers and crew of that ship, in the destruction of his Britanic Majesty's ship Peacock. And whereas, it has been found that former resolutions of this kind, passed on similar occEfeions relative to other officers engaged in like service, have given great discontent to many of the good people of this Commonwealth, it being considered by them an encour agement and excitement to the present unjust, unnecessary and INIQUITOUS war ; and on that account the Senate deem it their duty to refrain from acting on said proposition, &c. :
" Resolved, as the sense of the Senate of Massachusetts, that in a war like the present, waged without justifiable cause, and prosecuted in a manner which indicates that con quest and ambition are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral and RELIGIOUS people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits, which are not immediately con nected with our sea coast and soil.'1
The last soil that the gallant LAWRENCE ever trod was the soil of Massachusetts. " Don't give up the Ship !" were his last words. Let them be the battle-cry of all who would keep the old Constitution afloat.
f The author doubtless alludes to Dr. PAUL F. EVE, a distinguished Professor of Sur gery in the Medical College of Augusta, Georgia, who was foi a time Surgeon in the
Polish Army. EDS.

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world may look upon us side by side, under all like circumstances. I do not profess to be faultless, but my faults have been such as could injure none but myself. 1 have never interfered with a Sister's domestic concerns 1 have never abused her for mis fortunes of my own begetting I have never endeavored to stir her domestics to bloodshed I have never lingered when my country called me to her defence I have never asked her for special favors to me I have never claimed pay of her, for troops which never served her I have never been an ingrate to my benefactor I have never violated a compromise I have never complained of the allotment of
powers amongst us; though that allotment leaves me almost powerless. All this is true, and it is no less true of me than of all my Southern Sisters. Can
you say as much 1 No, madam, no. Take the string of acquittances and substi tute ever for never in them, and you will have your character fairly but delicately* drawn. And now to the point of all my letters. How comes it to pass, that the strongest of the sisterhood have banded with you, against me? This is amazing -
astounding soul-inflaming. " We have a fellow-feeling upon the subject of Slave* yy." Granted; nobody censures you for that. But does a fellow-feeling upon the subject of Slavery, drown every other noble and generous feeling of the human heart? Does it abolish the distinctions of character of virtue and vice of truth and false hood of right and wrong? Does it reverse the edicts of conscience, the laws of Nature, the rules of society, and the canons of Divine truth ? Does it turn insult, abuse, oppression, usurpation and aggression into virtues ? Does it place a WASH INGTON and an ARNOLD upon the same level ? Verily, from what is passing before our eyes, it would seem so. Saint and sinner, Christian and infidel, black and white, law-maker and law-breaker, magistrate and culprit, all band together in fraternal embrace, and cry out triumphantly, (f See how we are united as one man upon this subject!" The Christian goes deliberately to work to root out Slavery from tke bible the fanatic to root it out of the church the politician to root it out of the con stitution, and the disorganizer too root everything out of the country which does not work against it. Out of such a compound no good can come. Of this I am almost as confident as if God had revealed it to me. An explosion is all that can be expec ted from it. An explosion, which I should not be at all surprised to see shaking down the pillars of Church and State at the North, while the sound thereof is hardly heard at the South. I think I see the elements at work which are to produce it. The grave and the reasonable of the Church the WAYLANDS, the BANGS'S, and the RICES are clamored down and the wild and boisterous enthusiast rules the Synod. The hand of Justice trembles when a Slave case is before her Magistracy is awe struck when called to deliver up the fugitive to his master, and too often appeases the mob at the expense of the constitution. Rank violations of contract, followed by Heav en daring murder, find apologists, if not protectors, in men of note. The people are inflamed with harangues against Slavery, and, in theirmadness, set upon their fel low-citizens. Such is the state of things at the North. But this compacted pha lanx is arrayed against the Slavery of the South, and we have seen its plan of at tack. What now has it done in all its unity of strength, what has it done ? Il^has driven home Southern Christians, and seized on their property; and yet never was the Southern Church in a more healthful condition. It so happened (I will not say it was so ordered,) that of a single Church five hundred thousand moved off as if by one impulse nearly as many more of another Church did the like. Thenceforward
all has been peace among this people. Southern power was to have been put down. We have seen the fruits of this effort. Slavery was to be hemmed in. By means almost miraculous, the empire of Slavery has been extended beyond the stretch of any other empire on the globe in the same time. When the battle went North, de feat drove us back now the battle goes South, victories, the most dazzling, cover pur armies with glory. Slavery was to be driven out of the country. Thirty years' labor of Sphynx, and seven years' labor of the undivided band, has not emancipated one single slave, nor cut a thread of Slavery's bonds. But it has cut the bonds of the Union, riddled the Constitution, and disgraced the Country. Who but madmen or
desperadoes would persist in it ? Well, if it must be so, come on with your solid

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

31

columns. Now that you are strong, be a bold and high-minded enemy. Jf you are

determined to bring us to the bayonet, come manfully up to the mark at once ^declare

the connexion between you and the slave-holder at an end do this by some undis

guised act, which shall put him in an attitude of defence. Do not receive him. in

the synod as a brother, and when you get him there, swarm round him in numbers

irresistible, pronounce him a heretic, tear off his clerical robes, drive him away, and

appropriate to yourselves his earnings. Do not meet him in the Council-Chamber

as a friend, and, Joab-like, while you are greeting him as an ally, stab him under

the fifth rib. You are now strong fling off your disguises, civil and ecclesiastical

pull down the Stars and Stripes, and run up the black flag call in your sappers and

miners from the Temple, the Capitol, and the seats of Justice, and rally them to a

more honorable warfare. Mr. Wir,MOT's movement encourages me to hope for this

much at least. By a single leap from no one knows where he has reached the

fame in the political world, which his distinguished namesake, the Earl of Rochester,

bears in the moral world. Let him henceforward be called "My Lord," whatever

the constitution may say to the contrary. This first and only breach of it, on the part

of the South, will be parduned in consideration of his matchless intrepidity. His

achievement is a grateful presage to us that abolitionism is soon to assume a more

tangible form. It will be a relief to us to be done with the everlasting irritants which

you are applying to us, to know that we are through the blistering and cauterising

process and that your next visit is to be decisive of our fate for weal or for woe.

Your agitating, from which you promise yourselves so much, and which yen think

has done so much, be pleased to remember is not the thing which annoys us. You

may igitate until all the peculence of your community rises to the top, as it is fast

doing, for aught that we care ; if, in your shivers, you will be good enough to keep

yonr hands off our bonds and title-papers. The agitation of a distant pack in full cry

gives us no uneasiness; but the agitation of rats in the escritoir is insufferably tanta

lizing.

GEORGIA.

L E T T E R . V I.
MADAM,
I said in my first letter that if you pushed your abolitionism to the disruption of the Union (which I see plainly you mean to do,) the consequences would be far more disastrous to you than to me. This I asserted with much confidence, and I am now prepared to give you the reason of a prediction which seems so preposterous to you. I have already shown you that, with nothing to dread from our slaves, we of the South are better prepared for war than any people on the face of the earth; and I showed you that the Southron must be nothing but a hare in man's form, who entertains any fear from that quarter. I have none not the least. I reminded you also, that the abolition cohorts never could stick together through a single cam paign that they never would bear the expense of it and that of all others you would be the first to sneak out of the war upon this ground. You never have fa vored a war of your country yet, and you never will, until war becomes a money making business ; and as to binding you to the common standard by pledges and pro mises, that is out of the question. You have no friend who would trust you a minute upon the faith of these. Wince not at this you cannot cite me to a pledge that you ever kept. But these are not the grounds of my confidence at least not the principal grounds. It rests upon the word of God. I approach this with solemn reverence, and I beg you for once to fling aside your theatrics and advance to it calmly with me. I confess, that if to hold slaves be a sin under all circumstances, I am a sinner and a great sinner; but God knows that I do not know how to rid myself of the sin. with out committing what seems to me a still greater sin. But I am perfectly convinced

32

LETTER FROM

that slavery is not a sin under all circumstances, and believe that every man who so designates it will have to answer to God for most impious blasphemy ; unless, for sooth, an error of judgment, produced by a .one-sided examination and an upsetting of Scripture interpretations, which have remained undisputed for three thousand years, may excuse him to his Maker. Still, this is only my opinion, and though it has been supported by the whole world, Jewish and Gentile, for many long cen turies, and never was disputed until the rise of Abolitionism, it may possibly be wrong; and therefore, after all, I may be a sinner in holding slaves. But certainly I am not a sinner against you, and supposing you no particeps cnminis, He would hardly sustain you in a war got up to punish my transgression. But on your part the war will not even have this slight justification. It will be a war growing out of a long course of political shuffling and duplicity, under the guise of ami-slavery every step of which is marked by some petty meanness or God-defying sin.
I have to confess that some of my children have abused their authority over their slaves, and in some instances treated them with injustice and cruelty but the scenes which your Abolition-libelers have pictured forth to stir the passions and move the heart such as chaining the slave by his whole length to a prostrate log, and two men whipping him at the same lime putting him in a vat and turning a stream into it, which he could keep from drowning him only by bailing with immense and unremitted labor, without food or sleep for days gibbeting him, and leaving his carcass,to be devoured by vultures, with many other deeds ^of like kind, I never saw. The man who would do such a thing would be an object of universal detes tation through the whole South, and would be amenable to the law as a murderer. The rule of rny government is, that the master shall not exercise cruelty to his slaves; he shall allow them needful food and clothing, and he shall suffer death for the murder of them. Still, I confess, (for I will put down nothing here that history will not confirm,) that cruelties are sometimes exercised by the master upon the slave. Considering the number of masters and servants in this latitude, I can not say that is often the case in truth, it is very seldom the case. The reason is plain enough : it is not the master's interest to be cruel to his slave. And hence the slaves of the South have indulgences extended to them in hundreds and thou sands of instances, that the white man never receives. They are hardly ever prose cuted but for the most heinous offences. Our penitentiaries are filled with whites, for offences which slaves commit every day almost with impunity. If you did not suppose us both fools and brutes, you would learn from this the absurdity of your slanders in regard to our cruelty towards this people. What man so stupid and so brutal, as in cool-blood, to murder himself out of six or eight hundred dollars ? Still, at times, passion gets the better of judgment and interest, and my children are cruel to their slaves. Against all such, here stands the record: "And ye masters do the same things unto them," (i. e., act from the same principle, with an eye to the will and glory of God,) " forbearing threatening," (and of course abuse,) " knowing that your Master also is in Heaven" ". Masters give unto your servants that which is just and equal," (or equitable,) " knowing that ye also have a Master in Heaven." I have to confess, too, that in our courts, the rights of the slave are not as strictly regarded as the rights of the white man not as strictly regarded I mean, by our juries, for as to our judges, if they lean at all, it is always on the side of the slave. I know of no case to the contrary. Against such juries the record speaks: "The Lord knoweth how to deliver," &c., "and to reserve the unjust unto the day of Judgment." " God shall smite thee, thou whifed wall: for sittest thqu to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smit ten contrary to law?" "Moreover, I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there ; and I said in my heart: God shall judge the righteous and the wicked."
I have to confess that some of my laws (very few,) are too severe upon slaves. If I am correct in my opinion here, this, at least, is my sin, whatever may be said of the others, which seem to me to belong to only a few of my children. These laws were deemed necessary to my safety at the time they were made, and are so

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

33

considered by most of my family still. I know of no scripture-that exactly meets such a case ; or I would frankly give it. Farther than this, I am unconscious of offending, in regard to my slaves. On the other hand, nine out of ten, if not ninetynine out of an hundred of my unconverted children, treat their slaves kindly and hu manely. The pious of my family regulate their conduct towards them strictly by the word of God. Our ministers preach to them, pray with them in short, extend to them all the means of grace within their power. Many of them own none, and never will own any. Against all such, with many, very mafiy3 of your own chil dren, will your arms be directed in the day of battle. You wage the war, knowing all this.
Let us examine your character, and that of your children, by the same rule. I cannot take up each offence, and apply the appropriate scriptures to it, for this would require a pamphlet, if not a volume. You and your children, then, have dis obeyed the commands of your government you have spoken evil of it in times and ways innumerable you have abused its magistrates you have plotted against its integrity you have violated your vows to it repeatedly you have abused its pow ers to your own selfish purposes you have been ungrateful, malicious, void of natu ral affection, slanderous, backbiting, headstrong, deaf to reason, covetous, despisers of those that are good, persecutors, injurious, breeders of mischief, stirrers up of strife you have seduced servants from their masters, harbored the servant and insulted the master you (or your colleagues, whose conduct you approved,) have violated the constitution in refusing to deliver up fugitive slaves. You have passed laws to uphold your children in violating the constitution you have driven from your
churches as good men as this land, if not this world, holds; and, if all signs fail not, you will take their contributions (the largest in the Lord's treasury,) and spend them on their persecutors and defamers. You have (as I believe,) grossly perverted the
Word of God, and made it speak a language which its Author never meant to speak. You have set upon good men of both parties, honestly and peaceably engaged in rid ding the country of Slavery, in a way grateful to both master and servant, and lovebegetting in all engaged in it. You have crippled their energies, and thwarted the noble enterprise by every means in your power. You have sent incendiary papers and pamphlets to the South, well calculated to enkindle a servile war in our families. This you have done in the name of Religion and. Freedom; but Religion returns you nothing but groans for your trouble, and Freedom moves not a hair's breadth to your embrace. Still you persist. No fruits yet, but the fruits of bitterness no plan to be executed no response to " What must we do ?" nothing before you but anarchy and bloodshed nothing behind you but discord and desolation and still you persist. Hear the word of the Lord it seems to me prophetic, as well as denunciatory.
" This know, also, that in the last days perilous times sliall come. For men will be lovers of their own selves covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers,
fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses and lead captive silly women, laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth ; men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no farther, for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was."
" The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations : and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished : but chiefly them that walk after the flesh, &c., and despise government. Presumptuous are they, self willed; they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities. These are w-lls without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them, %vho live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants

34

LETTER FROM

of corruption" -"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed

the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man,&c.,

&e., who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the crea

ture more tlian the Creator, who is blessed forever being filled with all unright

eous wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, de

ceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil

things, disobedient to parents, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implaca

ble, unmerciful. Who knowing the judgment of God, (that they which commit

such things are worthy of death,) not only do the same, but have pleasure in them

that do them."

" Let every soul he subject unto the higJier powers ; For there is no power but of

God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the

power resisteth the ordinance of God- Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not

only for wrath but also for conscience sake Render therefore to all their dues ;

tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor."

" Submit yourselves unto every ordinance of man for the Lord's Sake; whether

it be to the King as supreme ; or unto Governors, as unto them that are sent by him

for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is

the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish

men, and not as using your liberty, for a cloak of maliciousness, but as servants of God."

" The works of the flesh are hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife,

seditions, heresies. (But the fruit of the Spirit, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering,

gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law.)"

" A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither does a corrupt tree bring

forth good fruit For every tree is known by his own fruit, &c. -"

" Vow, and pay unto the Lord your vows, fyc."

" When thou vowest a

vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure, Stc.; -pay that which

thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest

vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, neither say thou be

fore the Angel, it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and

destroy the work of thine hands 7"

"But let none of jou suffer, &c., as an evil-doer, or as a busy-body in other men's

matters."

" And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not

the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Relying upon these scriptures, I fear )rou not; nor all who may combine with

you. I mark your gathering hosts, as calmly as I view the setting sun New

York is your strongest ally. The plague spot is upon her. She has the guilt of

kidnapping upon her skirts. It was but late ly, her sons collected the last bonds

given to them by mine, for negroes, which they brought hither in chains from Africa.

On her statute-book, may be seen laws more cruel to the slave, than any that are

to be found on mine. Her Governors have overleaped the Constitution, to protect

the slave, while the black freeman begs for bread in her streets.

Her religious press, is closed to the complaints and arguments of injured Christians,

South. Her political press, holds up to scorn and contempt her noblest sons, because

they will not forswear themselves to further a lawless warfare upon Southern rights.

I do not fear New York.

Ohio is a strong and clamorous ally. Ohio permits the emancipated slave to buy

land in her domain, pay for it, and then looks camly on, while her son's repel him

penniless from her borders. Hear their tender breathings of mercy and compassion for

hose in whose behalf she is laying waste Church and State :

" Resolved, That we will not live among negroes; as we have settled here first

we have fully determined that we will resist the settlement of blacks and mulattoes

in this county to the full extent of our means the bayonet not excepted.

" Resolved, That the blacks of this county be, and they are respectfidly requested

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

35

to leave the county on or before the 1st day of March, 1847; and in the case of their neglect or refusal to comply with this request, we pledge ourselves to remove them
peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. " Resolved, That we who are here assembled, pledge ourselves not to employ, or
trade with any black or mulatto person, in any manner whatsoever, or permit them to have any grinding done at our mills, after the first day of January next."
Abolition looks calmly, if not approvingly, upon all this, and reads us lectures on the demoralizing tendency of slavery!
' I wish," said a Virginian to his brother, resident in Ohio, " to emancipate one hundred slaves, and I desire you to take them to Ohio." " I cannot do it," replied the brother. " The citizens of Ohio will not allow rne to bring one hundred negroes among them to settle. But do you take them to Wheeling, and there place them on a steamboat for Cincinnati, and speak of taking them to New-Orleans ; and while you are looking out for another boat, give the chance, and the Abolitionists will steal the whole of them and run them off, and then celebrate a perfect triumph over them. But if you take them to the same men, and ask them to receive and take care of them, they will tell you to take care of them yourself." I do not fear Ohio.
Pennsylvania is another strong confederate. She too, if I mistake not, is an old kidnapper, though less guilty than New York, and both less guilty than yourself. This used to be the great slave market of the Union. Many a slave is now living who was sold from that State while its free laws were running to maturity. Thus did most of the confederates of the original household make laws to emancipate their slaves at some distant day, and in the mean time sell all that could be sold to the trader. Hence the small black population in those States. Such a combination as this I never can fear until I distrust the truth of God. I could not fear it under any circumstances; much less can I fear it, when the proof stands prominently forth, that its aim is not liberty, but power. It works admirably to your purpose thus far ; but take care, one and all of you, that the storm-spirit which you have raised does not spend its strength upon your heads, and leave us untouched, as I have already intimated. But few men among you have now moral firmness enough to brave its fury in defence of the Constitution, and they may be, probably will be, prostrated by it, but I shall be greatly disappointed if, like Aristides the Just, they do not live to see the demagogues who now revile them, doing homage to their virtues. Be' this as it may, should they be doomed to fall to rise no more, history will deck their urns with her richest garlands, while she turns with loathing from the graves of the WILMOTS, the GIDDINGS'S, et omne id genus. A couple of bipeds, for whom the English language has no appropriate name that decency will tolerate, have published them to the world as " BETRAYERS OF FREEDOM," because, forsooth, they could, not stretch their consciences to Mr. WILMOT'S measure. This is by no means sur prising. A dreadful moral disease has seized on the body politic North, the stench, of which naturally allures such insects as GREELEY and MCELRATH, which, in their disports over the infected carcasses, occasionally light, of course, upon the phy sicians, who, at the peril of life, and with a benevolence sublime, labor to arrest it. But at the close of a long lecture upon the anatomy of Massachusetts, I can not longer fix my attention upon these muscse, without the assistance of burnt sugar or chloride of lime. Leaving her to them and them to her, I turn to the pleasing task of re-publishing the names of those noble spirits, which the patrons of mobs,, and the apologists of murderers, have dared to imprint upon their dirty sheet. I give the list with another heading let Time determine which is the most appropriate :.

36 THE

AFTER THE PRIEST OF THEIR OWN LAND HAD PASSED CARE LESSLY BY HER ON THE ONE HAND, AND THE LEVITE ON THE OTHER,
HAD COMPASSION ON HER, AND BOUND UP HER WOUNDS,
AND
BORE HER TO A PLACE OF SAFETY.
BY THEIR VIRTUES,
WAS HER LIFE PROLONGED
TO WHAT PERIOD, T H E F U T U R E MUST REVEAL.

SENATORS,

New-York,

Indiana,

Illinois,

D. S. DlCKINSON. E. A. HANNIGAN, SIDNEY BREESE. JESSE D. BRIGHT.

Michigan, LEWIS CASS.

REPRESENTS TIVES,

New-York,

Pennsylvania,

New-Jersey,

Illinois,

STEPHEN STRONG, JAMES THOMPSON, JOSEPH EDSALL. O. B. FlCKLIN,

W.W.WOODWORTH RICH. BRODHEAD,

S. A. DOUGLASS,,

JOSEPH RUSSELL. JAMES BLACK,

Ohio,

ROBERT SMITH,

JACOB ERDMAN, F. A. CUNNINGHAM, A. M^CLERNAND.

Indiana,

HENRY D. FOSTER, JOSEPH MORRIS,

Iowa,

WM. W. WICK, WM. S. GARVIN, ISAAC PARISH,

S. LEFFLER.

ROBERT D. OWEN, C. J. INGERSOLL, WM. SAWYER,

Michigan,

THOS. J. HENLEY. MOSES McCLEAN. HENRY ST. JOHN. J. S. CHIPMAN.

From the above list it appears, that of six and twenty Senators from the North ern and North-western States, but five had firmness to support the Constitution, against the WILMOT onslaught; and that of one hundred and thirty-three Represen tatives, only twenty-six had firmness enough to do the like a wonderful coincidence of proportions in both Houses. These are things of melancholy portent. If they do not open the eyes of the South to the perils of her situation, and silence the bick erings of her sons about Whiggery and Democracy, and unite them in some plan of systematic opposition to Abolitionism, why then let them take the consequences. I would rather see South Carolina moving in this matter than nobody; but I would rather see any other State in the Union taking lead in it than South Carolina for
obvious reasons. What I think should be done, hereafter.
GEORGIA.

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

37

LETTER VII.
MADAM, How strange, and yet how fortunate! I had just closed my last letter, with
an earnest request to you to leave the Union, and a final adieu, when I received the Fifteenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts AntiSlavery Society. It was exactly the thing I wanted for it is an incontestihle voucher of everything that I have written against you. I therefore withdrew the conclusion of my last letter and reserved it for another. The Report just mentioned, emanated from the Press of ANDKEWS &. PRENTISS, No. 11 Devonshire street, Boston, on the 27th of January, 1847, after having been presented to the Society convened in Faneuil Hall, on the same date, by the Board of Managers. I re gret that I cannot give the names of the Board of Managers, as an invaluable legacy to posterity. However, I suppose they are to be found in the following list of officers and if not, they will readily be found among the archives of the Society. The officers are as follows :
President--FRANCIS JACKSON, Boston.
Vice Presidents. SETH SPRAGUE, Doxbury ; ANDREW ROBESON, New Bedford ; NATHANIEL BBORDEN, Fall River; STILLMAN LOTHROP, Cambridge; AMOS FARNSWORTB Groton; ADIN BALLOT;, Milford; JNO. M. FISE, West Brookfield; JOSHUA T EVERETT, Princeton ; EFFINGHAM L. C APRON, Uxbridge; WM. B. EARLE, Lei cester; JEFFERSON CHURCH, Springfield; WM. B. STONE, Gardner; OLIVER GARDNER, Nantucket; JOSEPH SOUTHWICK, Boston; SAML. MAY, Leicester; HARRIS COWDREY, Acton ; NATHAN WEBSTER, Haverhill; GEO. HOYT, Athol; THEODORE P. LOCKE, Westminster; JNO. C. GORE, Roxbury; Caroline Weston,New Bedford; LINAS RHODES, North Marlboro'; BENJ. SNOW, Fitchburg; GEO. MILES, Westminster; JAMES N. BUFFUM, Lynn ; CYRUS PIERCE, New ton; JNO. T. HILTON, Cambridgeport; THOMAS T. STONE, Salem; BOURNE eJpooNER, Plymouth.
Corresponding Secretary--EDMUND QUINCY, Dedham.
Recording Secretary -ROBERTF. WALLCUT.
Auditor--EDMUND JACKSON, Boston.
Counsellors. WM. LLOYD GARRISON; Maria Weston Chapman; CORNELIUS BRAMHALL ; HENRY INGERSOLL BOWDITCH ; Eliza Lee Fallen; CHAS. K. WHIPPLE ; WENDELL PHILLIPS; JOHN ROGERS; Jlnne Warren Weston; CHAS. LENOX REMOND ; JNO. M. SPEAR ; JAS. RUSSELL LOWELL.
When it is considered that these are but the officers of the Society-* that they come from all quarters of the State that they hold their meetings in her metropo lis that almost all her public officers act in perfect accordance with the principles avowed by them that every man from Massachusetts supported the WILMOT pro viso without hesitation or scruple we may consider this Society a very fair expo nent of your principles. It professes to be engaged in a Christian enterprise, be it remembeied and to have no object but the emancipation of the poor slave. I have told you, with a delicacy widely disproportioned to your deserts, that this is not true. That your aim was power--and that the object of Abolitionism was to crush themaster, not to emancipate the slave. That it was nothing but a political machine, designed to overthrow Southern power in the councils of the nation, or to over throw the Government. Thus speaks the Report in its third and fourth sentences : (( The tyrannic omnipotence of slavery, had been seen and felt for long years before

38

LETTER FROM

it created, by the natural law of moral antagonism, its deadly opposite, in the Mo dern Anti-Slavery Movement, of which this Society was the first organic embodi ment. But the development of the purposes of the Slave Power, and the strides
with which it has stalked towards its design, have been more undisguised and more
rapid within the last fifteen years than ever before." That which is uppermost in the heart is sure to be first out of the mouth ; and
the order in which the heart delivers itself, is a pretty sure criterion of its interest
in the matters delivered.
The complaints against slave power disposed of, the next thing which engages the attention of these pious pilgrims, is the Mexican War, and the Annexation of
Texas, of which these gentle Christians speak as follows: " Scarcely had Texas been welcomed into the society of these States, and taken
her place among the legitimate daughters of the Revolution, and the bastard brood
they had before adopted, when it became apparent, &c., that her dower of lands
was not enough to satisfy, but only to stimulate the avarice of our Southern mas ters." Here follows a detail of the events which led to the war, in which Mexico is applauded, and the United States abused. The history is brought to the action of Congress, which is introduced in these words : " Resolutions were introduced
and passed almost by acclamation and without discussion, containing the double/aZsehood that war existed with Mexico, and that prompt action was necessary,*' &c.
Next come the probable issues of the war. '' The parties which have so long distracted the internal economy of Mexico, appear to be united in opposition to this
insulting and infamous invasion of her soil" f< What the result of the conflict may be, cannot exactly be affirmed ; but we fear that the vastly greater resources of the
United States for the supply of men and money, will sooner or later extort from their weaker neighbor their own terms of peace. This event must be deprecated
by every lover of humanity, ofjustice, and offreedom. The victories of the Ameri
can armies are the triumphs of cruelty, of injustice, and slavery." " Every good and humane man, &.c., must earnestly hope that success may attend upon that
Power which is striving to remove from its soil a piratical horde of banditti, whose purpose is to establish anew, within its borders, the slavery which it has had the
consistency and the virtue to exclude from them forever." Here follows a descant upon My Lord WILMOT'S proviso, which, of course, is approved. " But," it con tinues, " it is not to be believed that the despotic majority, who have it in their power to block all the wheels of the government will relax their iron rule in
.a matter thus vital to the security of their own power" " Slavery must, of necessity, be triumphant; it is too late to REFORM. We have put it out of our power. There is no remedy but in REVOLUTION! A revolution beginning like
all such, in the hearts and minds of men ; but manifested in due time IN THE DIS RUPTION OF THE UNION, in the overthrow of our present DECEPTIVE Constitution, and the ESTABLISHMENT OF A NEW GOVERNMENT, of which justice and equal rights
shaU be at once the end and means of its existence." Here the Legislature of Massachusetts are taken to task for not executing previous threats of that body against
the government, in case of Annexation which they consider " a just occasion for
the Dissolution of the Union." They then fall aboard of Governor BRIGBS, for raying, " that whatever the difference of opinion as to the origin or necessity of
the war, the Constitutional authorities have declared that war exists'* and that all honorable means should be used to bring it to a speedy and successful termination j and they thus arraign him : " This, it seems, is the idea of patriotism and human
ity entertained by the Baptist Deacon of Pittsfield, fycS* " No matter what may be the origin or necessity of a war, provided a profligate government have embroiled
us in one; humanity plainly dictates to us that we must fight it out!" They,, therefore, quote with approbation the following resolution adopted by the New Eng
land Convention of Abolitionists :
"Resolved, That at the bar of Liberty and Humanity, we impeach GEORGE N.
BRIGGS, Stc., as perjured, on his own principles, as a traitor by his own showing
as one, before ichose guilt the infamy of Arnold, and of the Missouri Compromiser^

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

39

becomes respectability and decency; since, under oath to support the Constitution of the United States, he calls on the Commonwealth to rally to a war which is waged to defend and protect an act (the Annexation of Texas,) which he himself has so often declared a ' violation of the Constitution/ " Sec. &c.
Then follows a tirade of abuse of divers others, good citizens of Massachusetts, who could not subscribe to these revolutionary doctrines, which closes with a reference to some of their opposers, as follows:
'' We shall watch with interest what such men can do for the deliverance of the State from pro-slavery bondage; but we believe they will be compelled to come to the conclusion at last, that their deliverance is impossible, as long as she remains a member of a Slave-holding Confederacy ; and that her real prosperity and true honor can only be secured BY THE BLOW THAT SHALL SEVER THE BOND OF THE EX
ISTING UNION," The next thing discussed is the triumph of Abolitionism (last year,) in New
Hampshire, which is ascribed to Annexation. Then New York is peppered for re jecting the black-suffrage clause of her new Constitution; and the Tribune is applaud ed for having " Iwnorably distinguished itself by its maintenance of the right."
These matters disposed of, the melancholy rencounter at Richmond is introduced, and traced to the Annexation of Texas. Dr. S ?, the Abolition Editor of Bal timore, is complimented. CASSIFS M. CLAY is censured for quitting his Press and going into the army, and the National Era of Washington, Edited by Dr. G. BAI LEY, is brought under consideration.
This, it seems, from the Report, is professedly an Abolition Paper, which has created some alarms in the city authorities of Georgetown. The Report quotes the following paragraph from that paper, to show that they need be under no alarms from such an anti-slavery paper as that: " If we thought him (Gen'1. TAYLOR,) in danger, and that volunteers from this section were really needed- to save him, we should certainly postpone the articles we are now writing. Heaven forbid that word or act of ours should have the remotest tendency to jeopard the safety of that noble officer and his brave army." " When they come to learn this," continues the Report " they will not see in him a very dangerous enemy to their peculiar institution We are bold to affirm, that a man who could entertaiu and express such feelings towards the slaveholding leader OF OUR NATIONAL BANDITTI, engaged in our piratical incursion into Mexico for the extension and perpetuation of slavery that such a man, whatever else he may be, is not AN ABOLITIONIST, and need not be feared, and should not be encouraged as such!"
This brings us to the 31st page of the Report, where the question of gradual eman cipation, with compensation to the owners ofslaves, is discussed. Of course this mode of emancipation is repudiated upon the ground that the South is fully apprised of all th . evils of Slavery, (which are enumerated,) but maintains it, not for the wealth but the power which it secures to her and which, of course, she will never give up " except by a radical and revolutionary change in our political relations ; either by a change of the Constitution (which, as matters now stand, is politically and morally impossible,) or by a Dissolution of the Union." As there is no hope of a change in the present state of things, the Report declares that " Disunion, religious and political, w the only remedy--far the distempered and disjointed times in which we live--for the deliverance oftJie skive, and for the enfranchisement of ourselves."
How my pious sister is going to liberate the slave by this oft-repeated remedy of " Disunion," 1 confess I cannot see. Perhaps Mrs. Vice President CAROLINE WESTON, Mrs- Counsellor MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN, or Mrs. Counsellor ELIZA LEE FALLEN, may enlighten me upon this head if they will. Your plan of ahusing and terrifying all who take office, into perjury, may accomplish this end if you can gel- enough of your caste into Congress. They may snatch power by fraud, force and false swearing, sufficient to drive us from the Union, and then you may use that power in cutting our throats for the benefit of the slave ; but, to my great delight, the Report seems to give up this plan as hopeless, and to contemplate secession on your part as the effectual remedy. In that case, I cannot see how the slave will be

40

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relieved ; but I can see how the country would be relieved, greatly, joyously, glori ously.
The Report proceeds from this country to England, and immediately its style temper and spirit undergoes a visible change : " The Anti-Slavery history of Eng land has been unusually full of various incident during the past year. The forma tion of the Anti-Slavery League, the Evangelical Alliance, the visit of Mr. GARRI SON, the extensive agitation of the Slavery question by his means, assisted by Mr. THOMPSON, and the American Abolitionists--------have made the last year of ex traordinary Anti-Slavery animation and interest. We believe that we could never boast of a larger and more devoted band ot faithful friends in the Mother Country, than we now possess. We have received elegant gifts from a multi tude of other places, (besides London, Bristol, &c.) and are thus put in communica tion with new and efficient friends." Then comes a list of the distinguished aboli tionists of England who have died during the past year, with suitable compliments. Of the deceased EDW'D. S. ABBY, it says : " He wasan abolitionist of the finest water. He alone of the English tourists in America was able to withstand the in fluence of our pro-slavery air : He separated himself from the Anti-Corn Law
League when it sent complimentary gifts to Mr. McDurriE and Mr. CALHOUN, and thus recognised 'soul drivers, and negro jobbers the enemies of personal freedom as the friends of commercial freedom.7 "
Scotland is next introduced : " The conflict between the abolitionists of Scotland and the Free Church, in the matter of blood-money, has been carried on with even more vigor during the past year than ever before. The haters of Slavery and lov ers of pure Christianity have not had their sense of the comfort that was given to the one, and the injury that was done to the other, by the reception of the price of | slaves and the souls of men' into the treasury of the seceding Kirk, at all dimin ished by the experience of another year."
Here follows a flattering account of the labors of Abolition Missionaries to Eng land. Then comes Ireland. " The Irish contributions to the Bazaar, like those we have just enumerated, were of increased amount in quantity, elegance and value. We accept this annual increase of the tribute paid to the Image of God in chains, whose dungeon is this broad land, as a grateful evidence of an increasing and spread ing sympathy with universal Humanity."
A word to thee, Ireland, in passing. We do not forget that you are far away from us, and-that you are ignorant of the true state of things in this country ; and there fore we rather admire than censure your liberality to an enterprize which we know you believe to be philanthropic. It fills my soul with noble emotions, and my eyes with the best tears they ever shed, when I see your national generosity unextinguished by famine, and your free hand stretched across the broad Atlantic to relieve those whom you think in greater distress than yourself, while your own children perish by hundreds at your doors. But, oh God, what shall I say of that horde of Monsters who, in a land overflowing with plenty, can seize these last drainings of your noble soul, and spend them in fitting out a band of noisy vagrants to stir dis cord between the two countries, desolate this Eden of peace, and to persuade your famishing children to die, rather than eat the bread which our charity places in their hands! In recording these things, I feel that I am bidding a long farewell to the honor of my country that the pride which I used to feel at being called an American is humbled forever and that I would almost change places with Ireland, to change names with her. Land of our champion, BITRKE, and mother of some of our noblest foster-children, we excuse thee. Reject our charities if you will; but we will offer them as teng as we see thee in distress, and no harsh words which your intemperate sons may give us in return, shall deaden our sympathies for you, silence our prayers in your behalf, or tear you from the most consecrated seat in our affections. We know you to be deceived. But I never can excuse that nest of artful
spiders that caught you in their web, and then sucked your dying blood. I did not suppose that even Abolitionism could go thus far. It is to be hoped that it can go
no farther. After combining all that is despicable in man, with all that is.

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

41

in the hyena, may we not hope that it has reached its maximum in crime, and that
henceforward its course will be downward, downward, downward, until, far below the stoop of decent society, it is pointed to in warning of malcontents, ingrates, traducers, demagogues, anarchists, schismatics, inquisitors, hypocrites, traitors, vam
pires ! I am not half through the Report, hut I cannot return to it now. GEORGIA.

LETTER VIII.
MADAM.
I left the Report at the introduction of Ireland. The next thing in order is a long account of Mr. GARRISON'S Mission to Great Britain, with his wonderful works there. THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE, comes next; which is handled with out gloves, for allowing certain Slaveholding Ministers to take seats with the body. Their feelings soon began to be lacerated by Anti-Slavery movements, which they bore with such meekness as to call from Sir CULLEN E. SMITH a high compliment j and he expressed "his admiration of the grace of God in enabling them to listen to what must cut them to the heart's core, with such Christian meekness." Of this re mark, these pious Abolitionists speak thus: " Whether the grace of God was ex hausted, or whether the silence of the American brethren was only owing to their not having had a chance to speak, we cannot affirm." They proceed: > An amend ment was moved by the Rev. JNO. NELSON, peremptorily excluding slaveholders. It was, however, rejected." "VERILY, THEY ARE ALL ONE BRO THERHOOD OF THIEVES!" (The last words printed as they are in the Re port.) THE ANTI-SLAVERY LEAGUE, is then brought upon the carpet: " Its ob ject is to act for the abolition of Slavery in every land; but with special reference to the United States, in concert with uncompromising Abolitionists, who compose the American Anti-Slavery Society." " There exists a large amount of Anti- Slavery feeling, and a warm sympathy with the American ' Society in its principles and measures throughout Great Britain and Ireland ; but there has been wanting, hither to, a fitting medium through which this feeling and this sympathy could make them selves heard and felt. This has now been provided, and we cannot doubt that the benefits of intelligent co-operation will soon be perceived in the aspect and the pro gress of the cause." " A bond of Union has been created between the true Aboli tionist of the Old World, whose links extend across the Atlantic and unite them in a tangible tie of brotherhood with the New. Facilities of spreading the knowledge of the condition and the necessities of the cause in this country will be greatly in creased, Stc., &c." " One of the chief advantages which we anticipate from it is
the increased opportunities it will give for creating and expressing a yet stronger ab horrence of American Slavery in the British Islands than that which now exists there." " Let the general mind of England become thoroughly possessed of the facts of American Slavery, and obey the impulses which such facts must create in every generous bosom, and the hand of destiny will have written the words of doom upon the walls of our BABYLON. When public sentiment is such in the British Isl ands that, no slaveholder shall be received into any pulpit or at any communion table at court, in a public capacity the church the dinner table the circle of fire which has already been kindled round the scorpion, will grow hotter and hotter and close nearer and nearer, until it will be compelled to bury its sting in its own brain, and rid the world by a blessed suicide of its monstrous existence. It is to promote this state ofpublic feeling and to direct it in the wisest manner that THE LEAGUE HAS BEEN INSTITUTED."
This, Madam, is just what I have said was your project; though I did not know that it had been so publicly avowed. Let me just remind you, that such files as

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these, kindled by the slaves of kings, and the scullions of slaves, will only warm the scorpion into life, vigor, and activity, and give it the lustre upon earth, that the con queror of Orion, the boaster, bears in the heavens. It is for such ehamberers as you are. to feel tbemselves honored by being admitted to the presence of Royalty; and to drop courtesies for the crumbs of favor that she may fling to you. We are made of very different material. Go, form your foreign alliances, and get every king of every land, and every bishop of every church, to unite in a sentence of excommuni cation upon us; and if you ever find that it relaxes one muscle of one cheek at the South excites one blush, or elicits one sigh pronounce us recreants to our birth right, and traitors to Republicanism. Here is a beautiful sentiment, is it not ? to be dropped from the sons of HANCOCK, in the city which he immortalized : " We can only promise, on the behalf of the American Abolitionists, that we will do our best to deserve the confidence and co-operation of those on the other side of the Atlantic,
by a strenuous continuance of our own agitation." In the next place we are introduced to THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY,
in New York, at which President GARRISON " took the ground that it was the duty of all those whom he addressed, to refuse to have anything to do with a war waged by Slavery upon a nation whose chief crime was that she had abolished Slavery." '' The Society re-affirmed its testimonies of former years as to the pro-slavery char acter of'he Third Political Party, and of the Colonization Society- -expressed its sense of the value of the services of our American friends in Great Britain, and their
zealous coadjutors, and its opinions on various matters of National and Local Poli tics connected with Slavery and adjourned."
Then comes an account of the NEW ENGLAND CONVENTION OF ABOLITIONISTS. This was the Convention which passed the resolution concerning Governor BRIGGS, already mentioned ; and this, with another quoted below, seems to have been about all they did. Alderman PRESTON, it seems, had at that time firmness enough to tell these traitors, after three days moral rioting, that they could no longer have the Hall (Fanuel) for their meetings. They took him to task next day, through the press, and concluded their address as follows : " We would ask our fellow citizens, whether he would have dared thus to insult
any political party, or any other phil?nthropic movement?" These philanthropists, be it remembered, had just passed a resolution pronouncing
the Governor of the State a perjured villain ; and another introduced by WM. H, CHANNING " denying the existence of any lawful Government of the United States, of any Union, of any obligation of allegiance or countenance to either, and pledging themselves togive no aid or support to the Mexican war, and to do ALL IN OUR POW ER TO FORM A NEW UNION AND A NEW CONSTITUTION.". This resolution was sustained, amidst mingled cheers and hisses, by Mr. CHANNING, the Rev. THEO DORE PARKER, Mr. REDMOND, and others, and enthusiastically adopted." Was it not cruel in the Alderman to deny these gentle spirits the privileges that he allowed to political parties 9
Next comes an account of " NORTHERN PRISONERS AT THE SOUTH." It opens with the intelligence that " the number of victims to slave-holding vengeance has been diminished since the last report." Here they had but small capital, and of course they made the most of TORREY'S case, Mr. BURR, a prisoner in Missouri, had been discharged, and the Parkersburgh case had been decided by a Virginia Court in favor of Ohio. It is really a source of pride and exultation in me to see the Southern Magistracy holding the scales of justice with a steady hand in such a case, while Abolition Governors, Judges, and Congressmen, in like cases, forget all the obligations of justice, fatriotism, and duty, with the most reckless indifference.
The next subject discussed is the " ANTI-SLAVERY PRESS." They speak in high terms of The Liberator, the National Jhiti-Slavery Standard published in New York, THE PENNSYLVANIA FREEMAN, and the ANTI-SLAVERY BUGLE published in the West, by Mr. and Mrs. JONES. " The West," continues the Report, " has been again the scene of extensive agitation, under the direction of SAMUEL BROOKE. We have no room for particulars we can only say that they are in the highest de
gree gratifying and encouraging."

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

43

ANTI-SLAVERY FAIRS come next in order, which are declared to be increasing in number and contributions. Then,
KIDNAPPING AT THE NORTH. Under this head, we have an account of a fc slave who had secreted himself on board the brig Ottoman, at New Orleans, and was not discovered until she had put to sea. The Captain, JAMES W, HANNUM, kept hini in custody on board the ship, and afterwards landed him on Spectacle Island, for the purpose of returning him to New Orleans." The slave "escaped, but was re taken and sent back to the owner. " As soon as it was known that there was such a slave in our waters, a writ of habeas corpus was granted by Judge HUBBARB, of the Supreme Court, and a warrant issued to arrest HANNTJM on the charge of kidnap
ping," but he was gone. I stop here to make a remark or two before I record what follows. The writ of
habeas corpus must have been granted on the affidavit of some one who swore that the slave was in illegal custody, at least; and if a warrant was issued, as we shall presently see it was, some person must have sworn that HANNUM had kidnapped the slave. But the slave obtruded himself on board the vessel which HANNUM com manded, and the Constitution of the United States required that the fugitive should be delivered to his master, by the constituted authorities of the State of Massachu setts. What was done? The Report tells us: "But though it was too late to save the slave, it was not too late for Boston to express its sense of this outrage on the laws of Humanity, of Massachusetts, and of God. , Accordingly a public meeting was called to meet in Fanuel Hall, on the 17th of September, to utter its voice in this behalf. The Hall was crowded to its remotest nook and corner. Never did such ' a sea of upturned faces' fill that vast Hall before. JOHN QUINC Y AD AMS (!) took the Chair, amid deafening acclamations, and expressed his happiness in thus bearing his personal testimony in a case of personal liberty. Dr. 3. G. HOWE stated the case, the Hon. STEPHEN C. PHILLIPS spoke CHARLES STJMNER, Esq., WENDELL PHILLIPS, GEORGE B. EMERSON, Esq., Hon. CHARLES F. ADAMS, Rev. THEODORE PARKER, and Rev. THOMAS T. STONE, filled up the rest of the evening. The enthusiasm was immense, and was never greater than when WENDELL PHILLIPS pointed out to the meeting ITS INCONSISTENCY IN SUSTAINING A CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT, by virtue of which a scrap of paper with the name of the owner of the slave, in HANNtnvi'sand PEARSON'S possession" (PEARSON was the owner of the vessel,) " would have made the act a legal one; and when he indicated DISSOLUTION" (I print it as it is,) " as the only rightful and efficient remedy for these evils. If a vote could have been taken at that moment on the question of DISUNION, we are convinced that it would have been carried by accla mation. Resolutions branding PEARSON with the ignominy he deserved, expressing a determination that no more illegal seizures should be made, and appointing a Vigi lance Committee of Forty to see to it that there were not, were passed aeanimously
signal proof of the change in public sentiment since the Anti-Slavery movement which caused it first began." Thus were PEARSON and HANNITM treated by the ci,tizens of Boston ; and we afterwards learn that indictments were actually prefer^d against them, for the Grand Juries that refused to find true bills against 'them aSre
severely censured. Here, then, we have the Ex-President of the United States, a number of distin
guished Jurists and Statesmen, divers Clergymen, and throngs of Citizens, giving countenance to two bold oaths, (to say the least of them,) a gross violation of the Constitution, branding with infamy men who obeyed the laws of the land, enthusi astically applauding revolutionary sentiments, and ripe to vote for a disruption of the Government. The Ex-President returns thanks for the honor of piesiding at sueh a meeting! I did not know of this when, in a former letter, I complimented his goodness of heart: " Whoso keepeth the law" (says Solomon) " is a wise son; but he that is a companion of riotous men, shameth his father " I hope we shall heai no more of the Abolitionists being a little insignificant band, unworthy of notice. The "law7' of "Massachusetts," which HANNUM and PEARSON were considered as outraging, trie reader will be pleased to remember, is a law of that State, passed to

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LETTER FROM

nullify the clause of the Constitution which provides for the delivering up of fugi tive slaves. When South Carolina passed a law to defeat the operation of the tariff acts in her territory acts ivhich she believed to be unconstitutional--the whole Union was arrayed against her; and Massachusetts, as we have seen, stept forward to clothe the President with extraordinary powers, in order to reduce her to submission; but when Massachusetts herself passes a law to defeat the operation of an unques tionable clause of the Constitution, not a word is said about it! The Report pro ceeds :
" A case similar to this, but more fortunate in its termination, occurred not long before in New York '. Although the Mayor and all the police of the city were at the disposal of the kidnapper yet Judge Edmonds, did himself and the Bench honor by judging justly, and deciding that there was no authority by which the slave could be deprived of his liberty." So it seems that Judge EDMONDS' legal learning has not yet reached the 3d paragraph, 2d Sec., IV Art. of the Constitution, which he swore to support when he took his commission.
We have now advanced seven and thirty pages farther in the Report, and no plan yet proposed to relieve the poor slave of the South.
" THE CASTE SCHOOLS" come next in order. The Report regrets that the ne gro and white children are kept in seperate Schools, but sees the dawn of better times.
" THE POLITICAL PARTIES." The objection to them is thus expressed: " They are all equally ready to swear to support the Constitution, and if true to their oath, to do the work which the Constitution, as explained by its authentic expounders, re quires of those supporting it" . " It is still the heaviest of the chains that bind the slave to his despair; the iron which enters into our own souls who have consent ed to hold it."
" THE CHURCH, (p. 72) under this head (the last but three) the Churches are arraigned for not warring against the Constitution and the Government, under the names of the "Bulwark of Slavery," and the "American Bastille." The Churches, " almost every one of them, expands its doors to welcome the pious rob ber of the poor and scarcely any but rejoice to have the bread of life broken unto them by reverend meu-stealers, with their bands dripping with their brother's blood. The wisdom of the action of the Southern Methodist Episcopal Churches, in dis solving the jurisdiction of the Southern and Southwestern Conferences, and erecting them into a separate Ecclesiastical Connection, styled the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, has been justified by the result. The Southern Church, has gained everything," (except its property) " and lost nothing. It has banished the impor tunate spirit of Abolitionism from its Great Councils, and at the same time has lost none of its ecclesiastical brotherhood with the Northern Churches." Here the Baltimore Conference is taken to task, for disclaiming fellowship with Aboli tionists, and determining not to hold connection with any ecclesiastical body which shall make non-slaveholding a condition of membership in the' Church. After speaking of the support which that Conference has received from some other Con ferences and organs North ; the Report proceeds in the following reverential strain
" Thus the guilt of slaveholding is piously transferred from the shoulders of * ****.# & C0> # the great Methodist Slave-traders) and their compeers,
to those of the Almighty which are supposed to be strong enough to bear it." Shocking!
The New School Presbyterians and the Methodist Protestants, are then brought to account for a like sin. But amidst these discouragements, a ray of light breaks in upon them: ''Three hundred and three Universalist Ministers- have protested against the system of American Slavery, as utterly wrong, and confess their obliga tion to use all justifiable means to promote its abolition." And an encouraging ad dress has appeared from the Irish Unitarian Christian Society to their Christian
brethren of America, in which they protest against slavery. A lash or two upon

* The names.are. given in the Report; but they are not Methodists,.

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

45

the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and a disclaimer of
any hostility to the Church of Christ, closes the matter under this head. " OUR SPIRIT." " The bad spirit of the Abolitionists has always been a main
ground of complaint against them. It has from the beginning been made the excuse of the cowardly and time-serving, for not joining our ranks, or doing their duty out of-them >We are content that men should say what they like of our spirit, so that they cannot well deny our works.''
" OUR PHILOSOPHY." " Our Philosophy is not one hard to understand, though it may be difficult to receive. It is simply the philosophy of personal separation from an evil which we wish to destroy ~Under the guidance of this philosophy,
we have examined the institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, in the midst of which we live, where we have found the sanctity or security of slavery an essential part of them, &,c. Seeing as we did in the Constitution of the United States, the su
preme law of the land an imperative rule of action which made Slavery a National Institution which pledged the physical force of the whole nation for the protection of Slavery against a righteous, SERVILE REVOLUTION,'' (!!) " in the presence of such a Constitution, we plainly saw that there was no alternative for men who reverenced the obligation of promises, and the sanctity of oaths on the one hand, and who hated Slavery on the other -but in obedience or REVOLUTION. We have made our election. We have renounced our allegiance to a government which we could not support without sustaining slavery. And believing the existing Constitution and the present union of these States, incompatible with the Abolition
of Slavery, we have devoted ourselves to the abrogation of the one, and to the dis solution of the other, in order that they may be replaced by a purer Constitution, &,c."
" OUR METHOD." " Our Method is identical with our Philosophy. The one is the other, reduced to practice -it consist in short, in the use of every means in
our power to make this Constitution and this Union, of which it is the bond, infa mous and abhorred in the eyes of the people, and of the nations of $ie world that
it may vanish and give way to a Republic which shall, indeed, be the Model instead of the warning of the world we see, already, the effect of our agitation in the al tered tone of feeling and speech, as to the sacredness of the Constitution and the Union. We have disenchanted the mind of the people in a good measure, as to the Divinity of their parchment idol. We have taught men to calculate the'value of
the Union. The idea that loyalty and allegiance are its due, is fast becoming ridi culous and contemptible multitudes who walk not with us, have been taught by their own experience to curse the Constitution and the Union, as a delusion and a snare," &c., &,c.
Thus ends a Report of eighty-six pages. The funds of this magnificent institu tion consist of $5,852,01. Of which $3,262,11 were received from proceeds of the
Massachusetts Annual Fair; 447,24 from the Rural Fair at Dedham; $173,95 from office rent; $298,66 balance in hand from last year ; and $1670,25, donations
from all quarters Ireland, I suppose, included. So that it seems this patriotic band are not likely to bankrupt themselves by their liberality to their noble enterprise, Of these funds $1391,78 are paid to agents; $200 to the Liberator; $2,800 to the American Anti-Slavery Society; and the rest for rent of meeting-places, printing,
paper, &c. When we see how the funds are raised, we can account for the Lady Vice Presidents and Counsellors. Of the heroes of the Revolution, to whose me
mory they have erected a monument, they hold this language : " We cannot see the precise course of events they must be all moulded and guided by Fate,
which rules over this nation, through the crimes of our Fathers and our own." " We are constrained to believe there is no deliverance for the people of the
Free States from the yoke their Fathers imposed, and they have worn so long, except by a radical and revolutionary change in our political relations." The dominion of
Slave Power is so fastened upon us by the weak and wicked compact, which our
fathers made with it, &c." So much for the Report: what did the Society ?
They Resolved, " That Gov. BRIGGS was a narrow-minded or willing tool of a

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corrupt faction--not only utterly unequal to hi's place and the occasion, but perjured
by his own showing, and traitor to his own principles"----" That in this so called Mexican war, they can see nothing but a foray of pirates and kidnappers; and that the nation which wages it-----deserves the deep curse of every lover of right and
human liberty"----'' That they hail with thankfulness the:----abiding influence
of----GARRISON; and rejoice to take by the hand their beloved pioneer THOMAS CLARKSON," (an Englishman,) " and to hear from, his lips the assurance of his deep interest in, and cordial approbation of our pledged purpose to seek for a Dissolu
tion of this Union, as the most effectual method of striking off the fetters of the slave"----" That they cordially approve of the action of the Board of Managers of the society in instituting a movement for the purpose of asking the Legislature
of the. State to call a convention of the People to take measures for a peaceful secession from the Union/7 (God speed ye in that; and brand any State that ob
jects to it, with a mark of infamy as black as your own,) ' and they pledge them
selves to make demand loud, &c.--and to repeat it, until it shall be heard and obey ed*" (So printed in the Report.)-----"That-----the working classes of the North
--who stand aloof from the Anti-Slavery enterprise, will be guilty of manufacturing yokes for the necks and fetters for the limbs of the Southern slave population"----
" That they rejoice that the working-men of the Old World --are deeply interested in the Anti-Slavery movement in England.----Seeing the existence of slavery in this boasted Republic is the mightiest obstacle to their own deliverance from oppres sion and bondage"----"That they cannot view with approbation the proposal of
some devoted friends of the Slave, to test the number----of the friends of Disunion,
by urging them to repair to the ballot box and deposite their votes for such men as will never take the oath to support the Constitution of the United States," as this method would be " liable to render less distinct, emphatic and intelligible, our pro test against the Government of the United States"----" That each town in the
Commonwealth be urged to assemble immediately, and raise funds for the enter
prise^'----" That all who participate in this war, or who give it any countenance, are enemies to the country and traitors to liberty and the rights of man"----" That
they pledge for New England to Ohio, not only their hearty sympathy, but their most efficient aid and support, in covering with Anti-Slavery machinery the vast
field she has in charge."
These and many other resolutions in the same spirit, were offered and discussed ~nOt one of which can I discover was rejected, though I cannot find where the vote was taken upon some of them. Most of them were adopted.
Thus ends a meeting which continued for three days in peaceable session in the Town Hall of Boston. I have given the subjects, and all the subjects, which en
gaged its attention, with some of its views on each. We learn from it that its aim is to overthrow the government of the country ; and the instruments to be used for this purpose are anti-slavery associations in England, the West Indies, and the Free States. That these associations are actually formed and in secret communi cation with each other--interchanging missionaries and inviting counsels and pecu
niary resources. That the Englishman recommends agitation in this country as the most efficient means for destroying the government, and the American thanks him
for his advice, and promises to follow it strictly; and in token of its wisdom they tell him and the world that they have already wrought a magic change in popular
opinion, (and this is certainly true, as to popular opinion North of the Potomac,) and disenchanted the mind of the people as to the divinity of their parchment idol. That they have taught men to calculate the value of the Union--That they intend
to use every means in their power to render the United States Government infamous. When we examine their works we find that they are in strict accordance with these
principles. Not a plan do they propose or have they ever proposed, to emancipate the slave: all their machinery is directed towards the slave-holder, the Union,
and the sepulchres of their fathers. Falsehood, the most unblushing, is uttered, and the Magistrate bows assent to it, the Judge puts his seal to it, and the Priest
anoints it. The whole Vocabulary of Billingsgate is exhausted upon the Slave-

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

47

holder, and mingled with the ritual of Divine Service, without compunction and even without remorse. The war in which we are engaged is pronounced a war of Slavery, when surely Slavery had no more to do with it than freedom and it is ascribed to the malignity of the South, because Mexico emancipated her slaves--an idea .perfectly original with these Christians. The intruder upon our peace, is pronounced a martyr, and the perjured villain, a hero. A Servile Revolution is pronounced "righteous," and the government is cursed because it prevents it. With one hand in the pocket of starving Ireland, and the other in their daughter's ridicules, and six buttons on their own pockets, they call on the world for large con tributions to their noble enterprise. These things are not done in a corner. There is a logic in the place and the manner in which they are done, which is as convinc ing as demonstration, that their spirit, overspreads the whole State. The con clusion is confirmed by observation. Abolitionism, as we have seen it, is seen in some or all of its features in almost all her movements, civil and ecclesiastical. And would to God that it stopped here. But, alas ! it has extended its dominion to all the free States, and wherever it gets foothold, we find the same daring, the same desperation, the same contempt of oaths, the same inroads upon the Consti tution, which it here evinces. In the Cathedral and the Capitol, it is one and the same thing. To comment upon these proceedings in decent language, would be un becoming my subject. To comment upon them in any other, would be unbecoming
GEORGIA.
Note.--" In GEORGIA'S second Letter to the Southern States, she apologizes for as cribing the principles of this Society to the State of Massachusetts, upon the ground that they are plainly visible in all the movements of the State, though not as distinctly avow ed by her, as by the Society. The following resolutions which have passed the Legis lature of Massachusetts since these letters were written, show that GEORGIA, was not mis taken in supposing the State and the Society Were one in principle :
RESOLVES.
CONCERNING THE MEXICAN WAR AND THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY.
Resolved, That the present war with Mexico has its primary origin in the unconstitu tional annexation to the United States of the foreign State of Texas, while the same was still at war with Mexico ; that it was unconstitutionally commenced by the order of the President to General Taylor, to take military possession of territory, in dispute be tween the United States and Mexico, and in the occupation of Mexico ; and that it is now waged ingloriously--by a powerful nation against a weak neighbor--unnecessari ly and without just cause, at immense cost of treasure and life, for the dismemberment of Mexico, and for the conquest of a portion of her territory, from which slavery has already been excluded, with the triple object of extending slavery, of strengthening the (i Slave Power," and of obtaining the control of the Free States, under the Constitu tion of the United States.
Resolved, Thatsuch a war of conquest, so hateful in its objects, so wanton, unjust and unconstitutional in its origin and character* must be regarded as a war against freedom, against humanity, against justice, against the Union, against the Constitution, and against the Free States; and that a regard for the interests and the highest honor of the coun try, not less than the impulses of Christian duty, should arouse all good citizens to join in efforts to arrest this gigantic crime, by witholding supplies, or other voluntary contri butions, for its further prosecution, by calling for the withdrawal of our army within the established limits of the United States,and,in every just way, aiding the country to retreat from the disgraceful position of aggression which it now occupies towards a weak, dis tracted neighbor, and sister republic.
Resolved, That our attention is directed anew to the wrong and " enormity" of slavery, and to the tyranny and usurpation of the " Slave Power," as displayed in the history of our country, particularly in the annexation of Texas, and the present war with Mexico; and that we are impressed with the unalterable conviction, that a regard for the fair fame of our country, for the principles of morals, and for that righteousness which exalteth a nation, sanctions and requires all constitutional efforts for the aboli tion of slavery within the limits of the United States, while loyalty to the constitution, and a just self-defence, make it specially incumbent on the people of the frde States to co-operate in strenuous exertions to restrain and overthrow the " Slave power."

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LETTERS FROM

Resolved, That the annexation of territory with a Mexican population upon it, is highly inconsistant with the well-being of the Union.
" Mr. HEYDEN, of Boston, offered resolves of thanks to General Taylor and his offi cers, and even for their gallant conduct, which, after much wrangling, passed the House by a rote of 121 to 71. But they were rejected by the Senate.' By the exertions of the patriotic and high-minded CALEB GUSHING, a Regiment was raised in Massachusetts for the Mexican war ; (the first, we believe, that that State ever sent forth from her own borders to meet the enemies of her country) and she refused to grant it the temporary supplies needful, before it could be mustered into the service. If she feels herself dis honored by her connexion with the Union ; how should all the other States feel 1"

LETTER IX.
MADAM,
Our characters are before the world. Impartial history never can materially change my outline of them. Upon a comparison of them--(and they may be taken for pretty fair representatives of the North and South--of the Free and Slave States)--the Philosophy of History will have to be remodelled. Had M. COMTE lived among us, he would doubtless have anticipated her in this department of her labors ; and I sincerely regret that he has not lived among us, because his works will live to instruct future generations, while mine will die as they leave the Press. Never was the world more deceived, than it has been in regard to the influences of Slavery in this country. When the writer just mentioned stated that it was impos sible for an hereditary nobility to exist for any length of time, because the race would run out, and that poverty, however abject, never would arrest the increasing population of the indigent, I was startled. The doctrine seemed to me alike hostile to the teachings of sound philosophy, and the lessons of experience. Yet it is as certainly true, as any doctrine can be, that is based upon history. Nothing would be more easy than to reason it down, as LARDNER did the practicability of crossing the Atlantic by steam; but there stands ihefact, impregnable in both cases. So is it with regard to Slavery. We all revolt at it--we can fill volumes with unan swerable arguments to prove its baneful influences upon Government, Religion, Wealth, social and individual happiness ; but when we turn our eyes from the domain of reason to the stern reality of things as they exist around us, we find that nineteentwentieths of these arguments are opposed to the evidence of our senses. "How," inquires Philosophy, "can a people, born and raised to command, ever be brought to obey ? They will ever be impatient of government, restless under authority, and ripe for revolt at the smallest provocation." But how is the fact? You are the child of Puritanism, I of Commercial Adventure. The principle could not be tested by stronger cases. Does our history confirm it ? Very far from it. I never raised a finger against the Government in my life. The only time that I ever assumed a menacing attitude to it, was when, under a solemn compact to extinguish the Indian title to lands within my borders, the Government made a treaty to this effect, and then, under the,guidance of your John, was about to abrogate it. I then said I would act upon the treaty, and if he could prevent me from so doing he might do it. That compact was left unexecuted, until millions upon millions of other lands were bought from the Indians, settled, erected, into Territories, and actually admitted into the Union as new States. On the other hand, you,who have actually drawn five dol lars from the Government where I have drawn one, while I have put five into the common Treasury where you have put one--you, who have been pampered by it, and favored by it, and indulged by it, more than any State in the Union--have ever been in hostility to it, and at times in open revolt against its authority. I bore for sixteen years a course of policy which I then believed was ruining me just to fatten you, without lifting an arm against it; while you could not have your commerce

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

49

checked by it for a year or two without plotting its destruction; Your power has always been much greater in the Councils of the Nation than mine ; and yet, to de prive me of the little that I have, you are moving Heaven and earth,, covering your self with infamy, and openly laying the train which is to blow up the Union*. You have been at this work confessedly for sixteen years; and yet I am now making the first grave appeal to the world, in my behalf, that ever has been made. Look at the, power which the Free States possess, compared with the Slave States: and then look at their deportment towards the Government: and say, what becomes of the oftrepeated charge of Southern insubordination.
" Slavery is hostik to a ptire religion^" That you should think so, with your , notions of religion, is not strange ; but it is exceedingly strange that anybody else should think so. If it be true, as you teach us, that a Slaveholder cannot be a Chris tian--that Slavery is per se a damning sin, involving a breach of nine precepts of the Decalogue, why then there is little or no religion,in the Slave States. But as we happen to know, upon quite as high authority as yours, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who were Slaveholders, are all safely housed in Heaven, we are inclined to believe that you are mistaken, and that we have quite as pure a religion, and quite as much of it at the South, as you have at the North. This isa subject; upon which I fear to do myself justice, lest I be led into a spirit of boasting for that which none of us can have, except through the boundless mercy and goodness of God; but let any candid man come and dwell with us and try us by all the tests of Bible-piety, and do the same in the Free States, and if he will say that he finds mwe of the im age of Christ among you than he finds among us, I will admit that Slavery is hostile to a pure religion. But believe me, until Ifind more candor, more justice, more meekness, more temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, charity, peace, and good order, than I have yet found among you, I must fling that doctrine among the rubbish of a used-up philosophy.
" Slavery isfatal to mental culture." With not half your white population, and young enough to be your grand-child, I have more Colleges than you have, and as many students in them, though neither of them has near as many as your Harvard. I have fewer schools of course, because I have but little more than half your white population. I have made larger appropriations for educational purposes than you have ever made, (not counting taxation for these purposes on either side) and it is only because they were made before the time, that they have not been more profit able. Had we now the immense sums which we expended in splendid schemes of education, when we had no children to educate, GEORGIA would soon eclipse you in mental culture. As to the actual exhibitions of mental training, where the sons
of the two sections have come in conflict, (as good a test as I can find) they seem to me to furnish you no cause for boasting. Mr. Dix recently gave the Senate of the United States a very luminous exposition of this text--but I confess that in looking into that body, 1 could not find anything to suggest, much less to justify such a dis quisition. Nor can I fix upon the time since the foundation of the Government, when it would have been more appropriate to the place and the company. Of one thing, ( however, I am certain, and it is this; that there is a pride of character about the Souther a Senators that will stimulate them, under such lectures, if just, to the se verest exertion, in order to bring themselves up to a level with their more intellect ual associates of the North--and that humbled under a sense of their inferiority, they will come home and open their hearts and their hands to the rising generation, in or der to redeem them from similar mortification. As it is in point to my subject, I will add, that if we happen to get a Senator of note, we do not deify him, nor pen
sion him.* Turnino- from the Senate to the other House, to the Pulpit and the Bar, I can find
no better ground for this opinion; the due allowances being made for numbers.

* It may be well to say, for the instruction of distant readers, that one of the Senator*

of Massachusetts is called " the god-like," and the citizens of that State have raised a

fuud of fU&Q.OOO, in order to euable him to remain in the Senate.

;

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XETTER FROM

" Slavery is adverse to Internal Improvements." 1 have greater length of Rail Road than any State in the Union, and as good as any in the Union. I have spent more money on my roads and rivers than any State in the Union--and though the expenditure has resulted in little or no profit, the fault was in my workmen not in me; nor in Slavery. In these matters I have received less help from the General Government than any in the Union of half my age. At least this is my best convic tion, without taking the trouble to examine into the expenditures and helps of the other Stated--and not without having looked into these matters in time past. Turn pikes I have not had hitherto, because my population was too sparse to make it the interest of Companies to build them, and 1 have not now, because my rail roads would supplant them.
" Slavery is prejudicial to productive industry." For many years, when your white population doubled mine, the annual produce of my labor was greater than yours, and even now, so far as our labor is left untouched by the Government, I beat you.' Your manufactures have brought you up handsomely, and well they might under a system of legislation which forced down my productions and forced up yours. The census of 1840 makes a grand disclosure, to wit: that the value of your manufactures, that year, was sixteen-seyenteenths of the whole amount of capi tal that you had been investing in Factories for four and twenty years. In the same year the value of my productions were reduced to a price that would hardly pay two per cent upon the expenses of them. You have had another advantage, of me. For many years past, from a half to three-fourths of the exports of the country were of Southern productions. In exchange for these exports come all the imports. Upon these imports the government has levied upwards of seven hundred millions of du ties, and in disbursing these immense sums she has given to you more than six dol lars to tny one. Now, if you could not prosper far beyond me with these helps, you deserve to perish; if you cannot now be satisfied to let us all work as we please, and trade where we please, you ought to be drummed out of the Union. And yet you are not; one end, if not the great end, of your Abolition movement is to get pur foreign commerce saddled again with a paralizing tariff. What the world will think of you I cannot tell--what those must think of themselves who make common cause with you, is more difficult to tell. You are " disenchanting the minds of the ,people as to the divinity of their parchment, idol"--all the clwrms of Heaven and earth cannot disenchant you, as to the divinity of your mammon idol. Your creed consists of but two articles : " Get money--get it honestly, if convenient--but get money:"
ct. Slavery has a demoralizing tendency." This is considered an axiomatic truth. How shall we test it ? Shall we try it by the relative number of the truly pious in each section of the country ? The proof will not be found here. Shall we try it % the deportment, the zeal, the truth, the fervor, the charity, the humility of the professor of religion ? You gain nothing here. Shall we try it by the statistics of crime'? I know of no better test. Here, unfortunately, lam wanting in authen ticated facts; and therefore I must put my word against your record, and challenge
you and the world to disprove it. In 1845 you had two thousand two hundred and seventy-nine prosecutions for crimes, and one thousand and thirty-eight convictions. Surely I never had as many in any one year of my life. Of these twenty were tried and eleven convicted for felonious offences against the person, viz:--murder, rape, assault with knife or gun, and felonious assault. What the last offence is, as contradistinguished from assault with deadly weapon, I do not know, unless it be assault with intent to commit a rape, or to rob. If this be the meaning, this offence,
and the second in the list, is hardly known in this State. But as my people are quick of temper, sensitive to insult, and too quick to revenge it, I will concede that the crimes under this general head were as numerous in this State in the same year as in yours. But to be on the safe side I will grant, that they were double that number; and here I am sure I am beyond the mark. Offences against the person, not felonious, come next. Of these there were one hundred and seventy-five > seventy-eight convictions. They were for simple assault and battery. As the irre-

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

51

ligious of my people generally consider it a greater disgrace to submit to an insult than to fight, I have no doubt that we equal you here--I will say we quadruple you. The next head is offences against property with violence, viz :---riot, burglary,
highway robbery and arson--number, forty-five; convictions, eighteen. Now I think I should hazard but little in saying, that putting all these classes of crimes to gether,, we have not had forty-five cases tried and eighteen convictions for them in
five years. Riots we are strangers to. I never heard of three serious ones since I entered the Union. I cannot call to mind two--nay,notone, which resulted in seri
ous damage to person or property. Burglary is a crime of very rare occurrence--
highway robbery has not occurred six times in my borders since I was a State ; and arson but very seldom occurs. You had thirteen in your State Prison that year fur that offence. 1 will vouch for it, I had not four in mine. The next head is offences against property without violence, viz:--larceny, cheating, counterfeiting, forgery, &.c.--four hundred and forty cases, two hundred and forty-nine convictions. Here
I am sure you more than double me. All other offences, one thousand five hundred and nine; convictions, six hundred and eighty-two. Here (which is the best sign of
the morals of a country,) I am sure you more than quadruple me. On the 30th Sep tember, 1845, you had in your State Prison two hundred and eighty-seven. On the same date I had in mine one hundred and twenty-four. Now add to your cata logue the whole number of pickpockets who escape detection--a class of rogues
hardly known in this State--and you will have twenty cases of crime to my one. Let the comparison be closely made, and you will find this to be the result: In crimes originating- in temper, I am to you as four to one, (population allowed for.) In crimes originating in lust and covetousness, you are to me as twenty to one. According to your statistics, the first class of cases is to the last as eighty-nine to
nine hundred and forty-nine--taking the convictions as proof of the crimes. Now what have you to boast of in point of morals, over a Slave State. Capt, MARRY-
AT, speaking of the comparative amount of crime in England and the United States, finding himself a little annoyed by the statistics of the two countries, as far as as certained, puts the discredit of the comparison upon the shoulders of poor Ireland and the civil authorities of this country, and then adds: " Still^ the whole of Ireland, would offer nothing equal in atrocity to what I can prove relative to one small town in America--that of Augusta, in Georgia--containing only a population of three thousand, in which, in one year, there were fifty-nine assassinations commit
ted in open day, without any notice being taken of them by the authorities." Well,
now, Madam, you have a fine opportunity of procuring the emancipation of three hundred thousand slaves in a day. If you, with Capt. MARRYAT, and all the abo
litionists of the world to assist you, will " prove," by credible testimony, that there has ever been one assassination in open day in the city of Augusta, which the civil authorities have never noticed, or that there have been the one-half of fifty-nine
homicides (not to say assassinations,) in that city, since Georgia became an indepen
dent State, I pledge myself that every slave in Georgia shall be emancipated on the,day that the proof is adduced. There never has been a homicide in the place, night or day, that has passed off unnoticed " by the authorities." The only case that I remember, in which there ever was anything like remissness in securing the
offender, was a very remarkable case. It was this : An Englishman, full-blooded and fresh from his parent-land, went at night to a house in which a number of slaves were enjoying themselves, at a ball. This man, with some others,, obtruded him
self among them, and, without any justifiable provocation, discharged his pistol among them and killed one of the women. He made his escape, I forget how, but
I well remember that I thought at the time that there was some remissness on the part of the authorities in securing him for trial. This grew out of the fact, th at
it was manifest he did not intend to kill the woman; but it was, to my mind, equally manifest that he meant to kill some one else, the killing of whom would
have been murder. That the truth or falsehood of this story may be fairly tested, I give the name of the Englishman. It was CHARLES WORCESTER, a Phrenologist
by profession. This, I think, was the seventh case of homicide which had happen-

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LETTER FROM

ed in the city when Capt. MARRYAT wrote his Diary. In all the seven cases the offenders were tried--in one of the cases two were tried for the same offence ; the one was convicted and executed, the other acquitted. In another, the defendant was found guilty of manslaughter, and branded. In another the offender was con victed and executed; and, in all the rest, the accused were acquitted. Since that time, I regret to say, there have been several homicides--more than had ever be fore occurred in the city in the same time; but trials were had in all the cases with various results. I have dwelt upon this report of Capt. MARRYAT for obvious reasons. 1 dismiss it, with the remark that there is not in all Great Britain, a more moral city of the size, than Augusta. When the Captain wrote, the popula tion of Augusta was about six, instead of three thousand.
" But pass through Massachusetts, and you will find the county in the highest state of agricultural improvement. Pass through Georgia, and the eye is constantly offended by worn out lands, deserted fields, and decaying habitations." This is true; and what inference shall we draw from it? Why, at the first blush we should infer, beyond doubt, that the agricultural productions of Massachusetts must be greater and more valuable than those of Georgia. I suppose nine hundred and nine ty-nine in a thousand travellers through the two countries, would so conclude. But the fact is otherwise. Here 1 always beat you largely. I could give the reason of it clear enough, but the fact is sufficient for my purpose.
" But the condition of the poor Slave is so wretched." This is wider from the truth than any position yet examined. It is a common remark that there is not to be found a happier race of beings among the working classes on the face of the globe, than the slaves of the South. Most assuredly is this true. What is to make them unhappy? Having never known liberty, they rarely think of it, and still more rarely sigh for it. You might as well suppose that the peasant makes himself always miserable because he is not a nobleman; or the subject, because he is not a king. This source of unhappiness removed, and there is no other--no-other I mean, to a vast, vast majority of them. As to the talk of tearing husbands and wives asunder; it is not done once by the master, where it is done five hundred times by the parties themselves. But I do not mean to discussJ;he matter, espe cially to deaf ears. They are, upon the whole, a happy people. Let those who choose to give reasons for or against this assertion, do so if they will; I have to do with the fact, and the fact only. At this moment f turn my eye to this class of my population ; and if peace and plenty by day, and laughter, and music, and dancing, and song by night, unchecked by care for the present, or thought of the future, are tokens of happiness, then there are not three millions of happier beings any where than my slaves. And believe me, Madam, that you and your complotters, who gather up the few instances of cruelty to them which sometimes occur, and hold them up to the world as fair samples of slavery in this country, will have to answer in the day of righteous retribution for this falsehood, and for the unmeasurable evils which flow from it. In that day you will find, that all sin does not consist in Slavery on the one hand, nor all piety in Abolitionism on the other. That the Word of truth no more justifies hypocrisy, falsehood, slander, treason and violence, in opposition to slavery, than to drunkenness and covetousness. That with this word before you, and the lights which have been burning upon it for de cades of centuries, showing that God himself has more than o^ce denounced Sla very upon whole races, as a penalty for sin, he will not justify you in proclaim ing, " trumpet tongued," that Slavery under all circumstances is a damning crime against God and Nature. Nor will the false glosses that you have given to his holy Word, in order to reduce it to the measure of your ethics, be passed to your credit. Nor will he look with much indulgence upon those, who, unable to justify these glosses themselves, give them currency, under such endorsements as, " Dr. GHANNTNG has said," and " Mr. BARNES has declared," and " the profound this one as serts," and " the pious that one avows." On that day, as I reverentially believe, many of your sons will come before Him, crying * Lord, Lord, have we not prophe
sied in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils? and in thy name done many

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

53

wonderful works? unto whom he shall profess, I never knew you ; depart from

me ye that work iniquity !" While to many a slave-holder he shall say, " Come

ye blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the founda

tion of the world--for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty,

and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye

clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was in prison, and ye came unto me."

" It will be remembered, that the objections to slavery, which I have been consid

ering, are such as regard its influences upon the whites. Had they been confined

to the blacks, they would have had truth enough in them, to make it desirable to

every benevolent slaveholder, that they should be emancipated so soon as it can be

done peaceably, and with safety to both parties.

I am done with you, and I am about to bid you farewell, until we meet at Phil-

ippi. Let me beseech you to avert the ruin which you are bringing upon the coun

try, by a peaceable secession from the Union; and let all who think as you do

follow your example. You admit it to have been cemented with your father's

blood--that as long as men will regard their oaths, it is impregnable to any who

remain in it. You declare that the Constitution is the adamantine chain of slavery

--and you proclaim to the world, that the supreme law of the land presses upon

your conscience, and holds you to a connection with it, that is intolerable to you

and your religion. What then should you do ? Disregard your oaths for con

science sake 1 Abuse your lathers for their well meant error ? Set a mob upon

the Constitution ? Cut the master's throat to reform the Government which binds

you to fellowship with him ? Rob him of his acknowledged rights, because you do

not like his company ? Surely not. In God's name how have you made proselytes

to this system of warfare! Cease your agitations, and calmly appeal to the States,

(not to Congress,') to release you from the tie that binds you to them; and let us

exhibit to the world two sublime political miracles, in less than that many years :

the nuptials and the divorce of nations, by the omnipotent law of love on the one

hand, and its kindred law of peace on the other. We have struck the true theory

of Government, and God seems to be furnishing the proof of it. Let us discard the

notion of accession by aggressive warfare. Let us repudiate the idea, that the mem

bers of the body politic are to be bound to it by withs and thongs, when the nerves

are cut which made them subservient to its will; they can only incumber and an

noy it afterwards, and must soon spread their gangrene through the whole system.

Now, that we have a chart and compass whereby we can navigate the ship of

State through all seas in safety--so long as we can keep her own vermin from

her timbers, let us not forget the Cynosure of Independence; but bid her a kind

farewell for her pilotage through the breakers of the Revolution--blot her out from

the galaxy that encircles the Eagle's crest--put the Lone Star in its place, and in

language as peculiarly our own as is the sentiment, add a new motto to the Star

Spangled Banner: "LET ALL WHO LOVE ITS, COME--LET ALL WHO HATE us,

GO !" But will you, Madam, give us the chance to exhibit this sublime spectacle

to the world ? Not you. You have not the most distant idea of leaving the Union.

You could not be emptied out of it. With the adhesiveness and offensiveness of

melted sulphur will you stick to it; ever wasting its strength and tarnishing its

lustre by your suffocating fumes. Why, then, your pretended horror of Slavery,

which is removed a thousand miles from you ? To work upon the feelings and

sympathies of your children and your neighbors, in order to band them against the

South. Why bring the Constitution of your country into contempt? To quiet the

consciences of the confederates, in violating its sacred precepts. Why bluster about

quitting the Union? To cover your shame in your bold encroachments, and to

reconcile the South to them, through their love of the Union. Why rave at the

peaceable accession of Southern territory ? Because it adds to the political strength

of the South. Why wish to enfeeble this strength ? That you may turn the

Government into a machine, that shall work as a screw upon the South, and as a

mint to the North. This explains--what otherwise would be inexplicable--the mystery of your success.

lam done. I have stretched my defence far beyond the limits originally intend

ed ; but not too far, to do justice to

GEORGIA.

54

LETTER FROM

GEORGIA TO THE SOUTHERN STATES,
LETTER I.
AFTER having witnessed with ever increasing apprehensions, the progress of Ab olitionism for fifteen or twenty years--after seeing it spread from State to State, until it gained the ascendency in two of the strongest Churches of the Union--after seeing it, without scruple and without apology, cut the cords which bound the mem bers of these Churches together, and while in the very act of seizing upon the privi leges and the property of the Southern members, heaping upon them contumely and abuse, forbidden by all the laws of courtesy, not to say, of Christianity--after seeing it for many long years, harassing Congress with petitions to do what Congress had no right to do--and after seeing concession after concession made to it on the part of the South, with no other effect then to encourage and to inflame it--after having borne its taunts and its insults, until patience ceased to be a virtue, and forbearance took the complexion of guilt, if not of treasons-while its votaries were in the very act of laying siege to the Constitution, with a boldness and a wantonness never be fore equalled by this daring sect--the State looking indifferently upon its ravages in the Church, and the Church looking indifferently upon its ravages in the State-- while all these things were before me, and in progress, I took the pen, in order, to the best of my feeble ability, to vindicate my own character, and the character of the South from its calumnies, to expose its parentage and designs, and to implore the Southern States, by everything that they hold sacred, to cease their wrangling about things of minor importance, and to unite in some plan of determined opposition to this all-wasting monster. To these ends, I have written nine long letters, and (so far as I have seen) I have got ---- my trouble for my pains. No matter: the work is a good one, however poorly executed, and I will go on and finish it.
I now approach the most delicate part of it, which is to lay before the Southern States my views of the policy which should govern them, until the Abolition fever subsides of itself, or is cured by depletion ; for in doing this, I must necessarily seem at times, to favor the views of one or the other of the two great political parties, which have ever divided the country. All, however, who will read me with candor, and judge me with righteousness, will be constrained to acknowledge, that the real design of these letters (which will not exceed two) is to favor no man, nor any class of men, but Southern men. I think, that for every opinion which I may advance, I shall give reasons cogent enough to convince any candid man that I am sincere in those opinions, and that I advance them with no object but to perpetuate the Union --to secure to the South her constitutional rights, and to avert civil war; or if this cannot be done, to bring the South victoriously through it.

GEORGIA TO THE SOUTHERN STATES.

55

No one on this side of MASON and DIXON'S Line, knows what Abolitionism is bet ter than I do--not one in a thousand knows it as well as I do. To understand it per fectly, one must have seen its workings amidst prayers and hymns, and thanksgiv ings to God, in the temple where the sons of the North and of the South have been wont to worship together for more than a half century. If here, it can insult with out a blush, injure without remorse, dispoil without a twitch, and pray without a halt, within-the eye-shot of three hundred thousand people, and with nothing to con ceal its deformity but a cob-web tissue of sophistry ] be assured there is no security against its despotism in our "parchment idol," as one. has well expressed it. It is not a thing to be temporized, or tampered with. To my eye., all the agitating top ics of the day sink into perfect insignificance when compared with it; and for us to be disputing about whether this man or that man should be made President--whether there are more Abolitionists belonging to this party than that--whether this measure or that measure will be the most politic, with all the et ceteras of party polemics ; is like wrangling, under the axe of the executioner, about the grave-clothes that we will be buried in. Nothing alarms me more, or amazes me more, than the apathy and indifference with which the Southern people view the encroachments and the pretensions of the Abolitionists. With all their boasted high-mindedness and chiv alry, I doubt whether there is another people on the face of the globe, who would have seen the fires of destruction kindled around them, as they have been kindled around us, with so little resistance, with so little emotion. These Northern rioters come thronging the halls of Congress with bushels of papers at a Session, which they are pleased to call petitions for the redress of grievances; and they bristle fiercely at any man who would deny them this " glorious constitutional right of petition." And what is the grievance of which they complain? Why they of Massachusetts are grieved, that certain persons in the District of Columbia, whom they never saw and never expect to see, own Slaves. Open these petitions and you will see the very names affixed to them, which you find affixed to resolutions declaring the Con stitution under whose panoply they come, is worthy of the bitterest execration. And yet this thing creates no alarms or excitement amongst us.--But let me not again repeat what I have already said. Suffice it to say that encroachment after encroach ment, aggression after aggression, comes upon us, and it does not move us. At length comes the WIL.MOT Proviso, an outrage up"6n all decency and all propriety, unlooked for and unprovoked--a mere feeler to drag to light all false professors of the Abolition faith, and to segregate for destruction every Northern man, who might hare integrity and firmness enough to keep his oath and defend his country from this infamous attack; and behold ! it passes the popular branch of the Govern ment by a strong majority ! Northern Whigs and Democrats now take hands, leav ing their Southern allies to shirk for themselves. Peradventure, the South might not have sense enough to understand these startling indications of popular feeling at the North, the more desperate of the clan proclaim to all the world, " that upon this subject, the South will find them united toa man." Actions and words put together, and this is their version : " We give you to understand, that whenever Slavery can be screwed into any Legislative proceeding on this floor, whether it be in place or out of place, you may expect it to be done; and you may further know, that nei ther oaths nor Constitution will be held a sufficient apology to our constituents for voting against any measure the professed object of which is to oppose Slavery--no matter what the real object, and no matter how foreign the measure from the pro fessed object." This should have sent one general universal thrill of horror and indignation through every bosom of the South. But it has stirred nobody; most of the presses between the Potomac and the Rio Grande, have not spoken of it at all; and the very few that have spoken of it, have done it in a way that argues very lit tle concern about it. The citadel of Freedom is stormed, and the besiegers are en couraged to push on by huzzas and warnings from their homes. Even little Dela ware, who has but just cracked the shell of Slavery, cheeps to her Representatives to throw her two mites into the scale of Abolitionism. In the meantime, what are the besieged doing ? Just about this:

56

LETTER FROM

" Do you see our outpost stormed by a joint attack of Whigs and Democrats ?"

"Yes; what shall we do? Hadn't we better capitulate ?"

" The terms will not admit of capitulation."

" Then, do you hasten to the assailants and tell them that we are a high-minded,

chivalrous people--and do you demonstrate to them that if they keep on in this way,

they will certainly ruin us in a few years---and do you show how we got into this

predicatnent--and do you calculate the number of Whigs, and you the number of

Democrats, in the enemy's ranks; and when this is done, let us rush en masse to

the President, and beg him, for mercy's sake, to do something for us, or we are

ruined."

*

Thus, at the battle-field--how at our homes 1

" Have you seen the WILMOT Proviso? It is too bad!"

"Is he a Whig or a Democrat?"

" Upon that subject there's not much difference between them."

" Those fellows will never rest till they dissolve the Union ; and you'll see it."

" Oh, everybody sees that--what's the price of Cotton?"

" 7s he, a Whig or a Democrat ?" Aye, there is the turning point of our ruin.

If a Whig : Southern Whigs are as patient as lambs under his chastisements. If a

Democrat: Southern Democrats are as meek as sucking doves under his infliction.

I ask you, Whigs and Democrats, is this the way to save the Union ? Does the

history of the world furnish one single instance of escape from evil, by such conduct ?

Has it not uniformly and universally avouched it, and aggravated it ? In this strange

and unnatural deadness which has come over us, I see one strong ground of encour

agement at least, and but one! It secures us against hasty, intemperate and injudi

cious action. Let us avail ourselves of it, to prepare like patriots and like men for

the coming storm. In the absence of better counsels, let me lay before you the plan

of defence which I would pursue, and the reasons of it. The cardinal principles of

it are:

1st. The Union must be preserved if possible.

2d. If this cannot be done, we must so act as to compel those to leave it who do

not like it--not us. And

3d. We must be prepared to meet the consequences, if we are forced out of it.

Upon these heads I have to remark, that so admirably is our Government framed,

that Abolitionism never can seriously injure us, until it shall have got the control of

all the three great departments of the Government. While any one of these is be

yond its influence, or while any one of these remains pure, we are just as safe from

its mischievous assaults as we would be in the heart of a rock-mountain. Let not,

then, our Representatives or OUT people be rash in qia'ting the Union. An unconsti

tutional law can do no great harm, even if it pass both Houses of Congress, while

the President regards his duty or his oath. It can create no irreparabk mischief,

if it pass both Houses, over the liaad of the President, (as it may possibly do,) or with

the sanction of the President, so long as the Supreme Court maintains its integrity.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court is a permanent body, not dependent upon the whims

of the populace fur its place or its power. It must and will be, therefore, the last

pillar of the Republic which will give way, and we should never despair of the

Republic until we see a majority of that body the creatures of Abolitionism. But

the Abolitionists have the power to make the President, if they will concentrate it

on this object--the President has the nomination of the Supreme Court. If, there

fore, they get their President, and a majority in the Senate, they will be certain,

after a time, to get a majority of the Court on their side. Now we have seen every

where, in Church and State, that compacts are not worth a straw, in the sight of

an Abolitionist, when his arms are pointed against. Slaveholders. If Abolitionism

does not entirely reverse the moral code of its votary, it most assuredly perverts the

judgment and distracts the reason. Let us not, then, with the broad lights of ex

perience blazing on our pathway, vainly hope for anything from Abolition vows,

pledges, promises, or piety. These are sad confessions for a believer in Christianity

to make, but truth and honesty demand them. I do not forget the few exceptions,

GEORGIA TO THE SOUTHERN STATES.

57

noble spirits, who were seen plying the life-boat at the wreck of the Churches, and amidst the surges which recently beat upon the Constitution; but these are impotent. There were Christians, doubtless, in the Legislatures of Massachusetts and Penn sylvania, when they deliberately passed laws to annul the 3d clause, 2d section, IV. Article of the Constitution. I smile at these laws, for reasons that will be disclosed to the first Convention of the Southern States--they can be turned to good account anon--but they are an eighth warning to us, not to trust to Abolition faith under any garb. Our safety, then, consists in a sound President, a sound Senate, and a sound Court. The second we shall always have, so far as our power can secure it. The third depends upon the first, and the first may commonly be secured by pru dence on the part of the South.
The first question with us, then, in a Presidential Canvass, should always be : Is he sound upon the subject of Abolitionism ? Has he been tried, and has he proved himself sound 1 Not has he said he was sound 1 Can he be trusted to veto an un constitutional law, amidst the storms and threats and yells of disappointed Abolition ism ? If these questions cannot be answered in the affirmative, let no Southern man touch him sooner than he would touch a live coal. No matter how well he agrees with us in everything else---let him alone, by the salvation of the country. If he be sound upon the great point, and his competitor be like him thus far, why then choose between them according to your tariff and your anti-tariff notions--your war and your anti-war notions--or any others that you may spring up to serve the time being. Abolitionism is manifestly working out a result which its projectors did not dream of. Some of the more simple and honest-hearted really begin to believe that they cannot live in safety to their souls under a Government that recognizes Slavery. This spirit may in time, and probably will, if the agitation is kept up as hitherto, exert a controlling influence, and compel some of the New England States to quit the Union. We should throw all our power, therefore, about the Constitution, that we may drive these malcontents to despair of a change or overthrow of the Gov ernment. If they desire to leave us, let no Southern man raise a voi ce against it. They will not be out of .the Union a twelve-month before they will be sueing for readmission, as perfectly weaned of Abolitionism as I am now.
But how are we to do when Abolitionism makes its appearance (as it often will,) in the form of the WILMOT Proviso ?--when an indispensible law cannot be passed, without, at the same time, establishing a proviso that is fatal to the rights of the South 1 I answer, examine the law and the proviso well, and see whether the last be constitutional or not. If it be not, then look to see whether it can be brought within the cognizance of the Supreme Court; and if it cannot be, vote against the whole law, giving your reasons, and let the Government suffer the con sequences of the infamous tactics of these disorganisers. To illustrate : Suppose the WILMOT Proviso had become a law, and by treaty a strip of Mexican territory adjoining Texas had been ceded to the United States--and suppose that slavehol ders of Texas had moved over and settled on it, does any man believe that they could have been repelled from their possessions by virtue of that law 1 The officer who would undertake to disturb them would be sued--he would justify under the law--the Supreme Court would proj unce the law void, and there would be an end
of the matter. But still the Constitution may be so daringly overleaped, and, in a matter of
such vital importance to the South, that we cannot with safety wait the tardy pro cess of a legal remedy. Arid, whether this be the case or not, it is likely that the Abolitionists (without a blow-up among themselves.) will in] time get the control of all the departments of Government, and, as soon as this is the case, we should separate from them in a body; for be assured, that of all Despotisms that ever cursed
a people, th s will be the worst. Now we should begin camly and prudently to prepare for this event. We should
have a military school in every State, and we should patronize them liberally in every way. Tactics should be a part of the study and training of every College. OUT militia laws should undergo a thorough remodeling. Our men should be drilled

58

LETTER FROM

four times where they are now drilled once. There should be an official connec

tion between the officers of each military school and the militia of the State in

which it may be established. Each State should have complete equipments for

twenty thousand soldiers at least, always on hand and in good order. The people

should be fully instructed upon all occasions as to end and aim of these preparations

--every movement in Congress against the rights of the South should be made

known to them, with the names of the men who supported and opposed it, and of

the States which they represent. But is there not danger in all this ? None at

all. What can a well-disciplined militia do to disturb the peace of the country

under our system of organization, with the enemy hundreds of miles off? But, if

it be dangerous, it is not near as dangerous as Abolitionism, or apathy, or tardiness in

preparing to meet its inevitable issues. What has become of the haeknied proverb,

that '' the best way to secure peace is to be always prepared for war 1" When

the Abolitionists perceive that we are prepared for the argumentum ad Jiominem,

they may disband; and then let us do the like.

GEORGIA,

LETTER II.

IT may be well, before I proceed farther in the development of my views upon the

policy of the Southern States in regard to Abolitionism, to subjoin an extract or

two from a Massachusetts my last letter:

paper, confirmatory of

the remark with '.

which *

I

closed

" The great political contest in this country, in reality is, and long has been,

the contest between Freedom on the one side, and Slavery on the other. Other is

sues have been presented to the people, but the slave power has always stood back

of them and controlled them."----" Why, then, should we longer plav bo-peep

around this colossal power, as if Tariffs, or any such thing, were issues of the least

consequence in themselves? Why not at once present the true issue--the issue

which must ere long be tried and determined--that of Freedom or Slavery?"

There can be no doubt of the truth of these remarks. Abolitionism has two

names at the North, but is substantially the same thing under both; and turn our

eyes whithersoever we may, we see the signs infallible that the Government, or the

slave power, is to be crushed. If, therefore, we would not add the guilt of suicide

to the guilt of negligence, let us prepare for the great issue. How madly do we act

in refusing to lookthe thing in the face because it is offensive to the sight. I have

shown the best way to avert, and the best way to]meet the threatened catastrophe,,

namely: by keeping up the breastwork of the Constitution, and by organizing a

strong military force behind it. But there are other plain indicatians of policy

which are inseperably connected with these measures, and without a proper use of

which they will be unavailing. We have seen that the powers of the Government

must ultimately fall into the hands of our enemies, and surely we will not act so un

wisely as to strengthen the arm of that Government. To do this, will be to put a

dagger into the hand which is up-raised for our destruction. No measure, therefore,

which must plainly increase the political power of the North, or which must enrich

it more than the South, or increase its powers of exaction, should ever be supported

by the Southern States, while we occupy our present, position--however wise and

politic those measures might be in a different state of things. It is the duty of the

whole Union to hold the Government to the strictest economy; but to the South,

this is a measure of safety as well as of expediency. They who control the purse

of the nation will be certain to help themselves to most of its contents. We should

take care, therefore, that we do not fill it with redundant treasure. Useless funds

GEORGIA TO THE SOUTHERN STATES.

59

in the treasury are the nest-eggs of mischief in many ways. They become a bone of contention among the States--they beget extravagance and incautious expendi ture, which are sure to beget new demands for more money, an increased number of public servants, and a dangerous increase of Executive patronage. Here is the grand secret of the alarming commetion which every Presidential election occasions,. Of the millions annually expended by the Government, eighteen-twentieths of it at least go through the hands of officers of his appointing, directly or indirectly.
We should begin now to anticipate the state of our Commerce, in case we shall be driven out of the Union. In this event, we must either have no commerce at all,, or it must be direct between our own and foreign ports. If we cannot, as we now are, get up a direct trade, we certainly can keep from driving it from our doors, when it comes from other nations. The annals of Congress, and of my Legislature, show what my motives have ever been in regard to free trade; but suppose that I have erred in this regard hitherto. I cannot err in saying that while we are threat ened with the loss of the home-trade, we should be looking out for some other--peradventure we be cut off from the one, just as we cut ourselves off from the other, and thus be left without any.
The Southern States should, by some means, be interchanging their views as to their future connection, in case they be repelled from the Union, lest, when the evil day comes, they be like a touted band of soldiers, fleeing in every direction, without object or rallying point. I heard that it was in the contemplation of the Southern Representatives in Congress to leave in a body, if the WILMOT Proviso passed both Houses. This was probably a mistake; but suppose that had been done, in what a state of confusion should we have been at the South! This should never be done. Our Representatives, however, with that example before their eyes, would do well to meet at a convenient season, and draw up some plan of pro cedure for the South, in case they should discover that we can no longer remain in the Union with safety , and their plan should be made known to the most prudent and influential of their constituents whose suggestions should be carried back to Congress and discussed, and if good, be incorporated into the plan. In this way we might, in a few years, have a complete system of organization, ready for any emer gency--to be flung in the fire if the Abolitionists cease their attacks, or to be used if they push them beyond endurance.
All these heads I had intended to discuss at some length; but rinding it impossi ble to do so without treading upon disputed ground too far, and without seeming to favor men or parties, I forbear. This much, however, I will venture to say : that of the distinguished individuals spoken of for the Presidency, I think there are none who may not be safely trusted, so far as Slavery is concerned : President POLS:, Vice President DALLAS, BENTON, CASS, CALHOUN, CLAY, TAYLOR, and SCOTT, are all sound, I doubt not, upon this head. Could the lives of these men be pro longed to the requisite period, and their mental vigor be preserved, nothing would afford me more pleasure than to be assured that these men would monopolize the Presidency, (alternately one from either party,) for the next two and thirty years to come. I certainly have very decided preferences between them, but I would forego these preferences, rather than run the risk of getting a worse man than either fast ened upon us for more than four years, or an Abolitionist fastened upon us for any time. All who have noticed my votes for many years past, will give me credit for candor in this declaration at least, for I have been taunted with my unsteadiness in President-making not unfrequently.
A few words of explanation, and I have done. Some of these should have been given before, but I forgot them, and give them now. We all, who look upon passing events, have a morbid sensibility upon some subject--one upon Slavery, another upon Papacy, another upon War, another upon this thing and another upon that; and mine may be upon the subject of Abolitionism. I sincerely hope it may be so. But if so, it is a sensibility awakened not in the cloister, but by the unsought evidence of my senses. I cannot be mistaken as to the manner in which Northern Governors
and Judges treat applicants for fugitive Slaves. I cannot be mistaken about the

60

LETTER FROM

blood-hound fury with which such applicants are pursued by the populace of the North. I cannot be mistaken about the statutes made to protect the fugitive and punish the master. I cannot be mistaken as to the anti-Slavery spirit in Congress, t cannot be mistaken as to what that spirit has done in the Churches. These, not yet all told, are signs infallible to my mind that the South is in great danger from this spirit; but I saw her doing nothing, saying nothing to quench it. It seemed to me the time had come for some one to speak in her behalf--and I have done so--with no design to stir hot blood, or to excite civil commotion. I would rather nothing should be done, than that anything should be done in rashness or wrath. I desire to wake the South up from deadness and apathy--not to a fiery, intemperate, thought less course of action, but to a calm, determined, dignified opposition to this disorgan izing monster, and an equally wise and sober preparation for the worst that can come of it. I believed that unless something of this kind were done, the Republic would not survive twenty years ; and I knew that the crash of its fall would hardly be heard before the Northern Press would teem with histories, tracing its overthrow to Slavery, Southern intemperance, cruelty, covetousness and restlessness. I deter mined, therefore, to do my best to save our character from the ruins, if I could save nothing more. I believed that, but for Massachustets, the fell spirit of Abolitionism would hardly have been stirred ; or, if stirred, it would not, for many years to come, have assumed its present formidable appearance. I determined, therefore, to let the world know who and what Massachusetts was, in order that she might be en titled to all the credit or discredit which attaches to her distinguished ^position; and, with as much fairness as I could, I have bound up my own history with hers, so that if the one should ever be disinterred from the grave of oblivion, the other may rise withit. In doing this, I was not without hope that a new way of meeting AboHtionism'might possibly disarm it of some of its power, and thus prolong, if not save the Republic; while I saw plainly that the old way of treating it (not noticing it,) was adding to its strength daily, and that no way of meeting it could increase its dangers. When I resofved to speak to it, I found it warring upon the Constitution, snatching from us our rights, bullying us to our faces, twitting us with our ignorance, and threatening with one common ruin the Government, the South, and even its
own offspring--and yet I determined to speak to it calmly. But in view of our long-endured injuries, the wantonness of the attacks upon us,
the cruelty, insolence and daring of those attacks, the breaches of faith through which they were made, the hardship of being thus set upon, for no fault of ours, for a mere relation in which we found ourselves by birth, from which we could
not release ourselves, brought on us, too, by our persecutors--assailed in our feel ings, in our character, in our families, in our Churches, in our Capital, at home, abroad, at all times, in all places, by men, by women, by whites, by blacks, by Christians, by scoundrels, by ex-Presidents, by scullions, while all the time we were lifting up the natural, if not too humble cry, "let us alone --let us alone--for mercy's sake, for peace sake, for our father's sake, for our country's sake, for God's sake, let us alone, and attend to your own concerns--Slavery is enough to bear, all admit, without any aggravations"--in view of all these things, and their lamentable consequences just ahead, I have sometimes spoken unguardedly, perhaps too severely for my credit, if not for my cause. The candid and the charitable will excuse me; I have nothing to ask of any others.
One has said, " with the politics of the author we have nothing to do." If he will re-peruse my letters, he will see that I speak on political matters with which 1 have to do, as Georgia, in my sovereign character, or in the name of a majority of my children. I speak of Massachusetts (except in noticing some little incident) in the same way. I charge her with such things only, as she, in her sovereign charac ter, has done or sanctioned, or such as I have clear proof that a majority of her child
ren approve or design. I said in the beginning, and I repeat it here, that many of her sons have had no part in her ruinous projects, and that such are among the very noblest of the noble. If I am asked why I hold her responsible for the mon
strous doctrines of the Abolition meeting, I answer because I had seen the very

GEORGIA TO THE SOUTHERN STATES.

61

principles of that meeting in her own conduct, and had exposed them before I ever saw the proceedings of that meeting. I collected them by comparing word with word and action with action, and action with word, as plainly lurking under her movements, though not as plainly expressed as by the Abolition meeting.
I have been actuated in all 1 said and done by an honest desire to save the coun try, and to vindicate my character, and the character of the South, from asper sions which have been so long cast upon them, that almost the whole enlightened world takes us to be a band of cut-throats, robbers, and tyrants. That man GARRI SON goes over to England, and he fills all Great Britain with false reports of the Southern character. I have thrown to the wings of chance a daguerreotype from the focus of Slavery, and from the focus of Abolitionism, in the hope that kind Fortune may bear them along the path of the slanderous GARRISON, if no farther, and to as many eyes as he found ears for his detraction. Whatever may be the result of my labors, the design of them is as pure as anything that emanated from
GEORGIA.

THE END.

APPENDIX.
IS ABOLITION, AGGRESSIVE, REVOLUTIONARY, AND SUBVERSIVE OF THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS GUARANTIES TO THE SLAVEHOLDING STATES.
WITH an anxious desire to prevent the dangers which menace this Union, to the preservation of which, in its purity and original design, we are as warmly devoted as any men living, we sometime since stated our design to embody and present to the people in one view the tangible official measures of the Abolition Party, under their new banner, the Wilmot Proviso. We then thought, and still think, that the Slaveholding States have been lulled into a false, and it may be a fatal, non-action, because partty they fear to look at their case exactly as it is, unwisely expecting to escape its perils by shutting their eyes to the startling demonstrations of ill boding all around them, and weekly trusting to delusive promises and arrangements of politi cal managers, and the presses which are their organs and parts of their machinery; yielding themselves up to those who are harnessed to party, who make its triumph their paramount object, going for offices, power, and spoils, without regarding the fatal concessions which they make to procure the votes and co-operation of Abolition allies. Abolition is thus allowed to get into close communion with both parties; to walk up to the helm "of their political ship, to take the compass and steer it by their principles. And while dangers thicken, and the toils are being drawn to a fatal con summation, even after the votes of dead majorities of the House of Representatives in two successive sessions of Congress have cut away every principle of safety, and the concurrent and almost unanimous Resolutions of Ten States have rung the death knell of their Constitutional guaranties, such has been the lack of wisdom, spirit, and self-reliance amongst us, that presses and politicians, instead of rousing the peo ple to organize for the defence of their Constitution, privileges, and institutions, ex hort them to confide all to party management, and leave the safety of all they hold dear to the secret arrangements of political bargainers, wholly irresponsible tothem, and whose most trusted allies are men whose sympathies, principles, and constitu encies are steeped in Abolition. There is a fatal error here. It is time for the peo ple of the non-slaveholdiner States to disavow the acts of their politicians and leaders, and for the Slaveholding States to look to their own preservation. We cannot safe ly, without great risk, confide our defence to any but ourselves. The people of the non-Slaveholding- States should let us alone. The Wilmot Abolition Proviso ia splitting the Union into sectional parties; it is virtually the first step to a dissolu tion. 'We appeal from their political leaders to themselves to arrest this progress to the ruin of the Republic. And that the North may see the truth and know the consequences, and that the Slave States may also know the length and breadth of the measures progressing for their destruction, we shall adduce and publish here with such incontestible proofs of official and State action as the most confiding po litical dupe cannot palliate or deny.
The evidence derived from the press, abundant and virulent as it is, we pass by; the petitions and memorials of societies and individuals, under which the tables of

64

APPENDIX.

Congress groan, insulting and irritating as *hey are, we do not count; our proofs of hostility to the rights, peace and safety of the Slave States shall be confined in this review to the official measures of the non-Slave States by their Representatives in Congress and in their State Legislatures--these being too, almost equally the acts of Whigs and Democrats, show that both of these parties, with few and constantly di minishing exceptions, have been absorbed in the^movemerits of Abolition, and are controlled by it; and that thereby Abolition has been advanced into a new position, which is the m;>st dangerous it has ever occupied, because it is subversive of the Constitution, and Revolutionary, and will, if it is not now met, resisted and defeated, by the peaceful extension of the Missouri Compromise and the settlement of the is sue on that basis, inevitably lead to the destruction of the rights of the Slaveholding States and their citizens, or to the necessity of maintaining them by the sword.
This evidence will further show to the country, that ia all cases the Slaveholding States have been the party assailed ; and assailed upon points of vital conse quence, where to yield on their part, is to submit to ruin and degradation; and that they have never assaulted in turn, but have acted throughout purely in self-defence. It will show also, that while the attack is one of fearful danger, that it has been deliberately prepared, is widely adopted, has been pursued with a cool and inflexi ble resolution, and has combined in its aggression a most formidable array of the non-Slaveholding States, not only in and through the almost unanimous votes of their Representatives in Congress, Whig and Democratic, but by their State Gov ernments : and that being thus a Governmental State movement combined, and with this fixed and determinate purpose, it will, if successful, revolutionise the Govern ment, put the Constitution itself in the hands of Abolition, and take from the Slaveholding States every security for their rights and property which that compact now. guaranties to them.
The progress of this movement has been one of cold, stern purpose, marching steadily forward with unfaltering step to its object. To understand in its import the dangerous nature and the resolute progressive influences combined to carry it, a retrospect of a few years, to trace the prior action of Abolition in this country, will be useful. This we shall make very briefly.
Although a disposition existed with a class of individuals in this country to attack the slave institutions of the States, it was not until after the example of British West India Emancipation, that it was taken up by any of the States, and became excited to dangerous activity and power. Massachusetts took the first direct overt step in State aggression. The history of it is briefly this : A most dangerous in surrection had been discovered and suppressed in 1822, which had been planned and instigated by foreign colored persons, (from St. Domingo,) who had seduced the colored natives, free and slaves, into a bloody plot to murder the whites, and plun der and burn the City of Charleston. To guard life and property from the horrors of servile insurrection, an act of the Legislature was passed, prohibiting the intru sion or residence of foreign persons of color amongst our slaves; a measure neces sary to self-preservation, and of equal humanity to whites and blacks.
During fourteen years this act was enforced without complaint or remonstrance from any one of the American States. But then came British West India Emanci pation, waking a kindred spirit at the North. Massachusetts aroused from her slum ber of fourteen years to the sudden discovery, that this act of humanity, so neces sary to protect thousands of their free white fellow-citizens, their wives and chil dren, from massacre, and even greater atrocities, was a supposed invasion of hypo thetical rights of her colored citizens, and imposed on her " a paramount duty" to remonstrate against it, and resist it. The supposed rights of her colored citizens was their free access to our slaves, and would have opened wide our portals to the emissaries of rebellion, and put the peace, property and lives of our people at the tender mercies of that speculative philanthropy, which will see no guilt in stimu lating the black slaves to treason, murder and arson on their white masters.
On this pretext Massachusetts began a war of legislative reports, protests and re solutions, which has been prosecuted by her and other anti-Slavery States ever since without cessation, going even to the bold extent of sending agents with her com-

APPENDIX.

65

missions to invade the territories of South Carolina and Louisiana, to brave their
authority, and to break the laws enacted to protect themselves from domestic insur rection and servile massacre.
From this beginning sprung other acts of like character; and the records of Con gress teem with documents emanating not from fanatical individuals alone, but from sovereign States, which contain the most unwarrantable aspersions, irritating to their
feelings, unfriendly in their bearing, embittering rank wrong by biting insulls, and disturbing their tranquillity by agitations dangerous to their peace and safety; and yet under all these aggressions, the Slaveholding States, confining themselves strictly within the bounds of their rights and duties, have never been aggressors, but have acted purely on the defensive. But what has been the reward of their forbearance? An increase of injury and aggression. The causes for painful anxiety, from the con
currence of so many of their sister States in conduct subversive of good feeling and confidence, has more recently grown into profound alarm, by circumstances so preg
nant of evil omen as to shake all reliance on the efficacy and value of the guarantees
of the Constitution itself for our safety and protection. For the sake of convenience and brevity, we will divide and treat of these circum
stances under two heads or classes.
The first of these is the withdrawal by such States as New York, Pennsylva nia and Massachusetts of all State aids, stipulated for in the Constitution, and pro vided for in the Act of Congress of 1793, for the recovery of fugitive slaves, and for the arresting and delivery of those who are charged with the felony of stealing
slaves from their masters in their own States. The most flagrant of these is the act of Pennsylvania recently passed, and which we publish with this article--an act
which has been responded to in Carlisle, one of its towns, by the murder of a peace ful citizen of Maryland, whose only offence was that he arrested and attempted to
carry home his runaway slave which he found there. We omit the Jaws of New York, Massachusetts and other States of cognate character, not having room for them, and leaving this one of Pennsylvania to speak for the others, and to show to
the Slavehclding States how faithfully their Northern sisters fulfil the compacts of the Constitution, and obey the laws of Congress made to enforce them, in regard to slavery. And to enable them to do this more understandingly, we put the article of the Constitution, and the Act of Congress of 1793, side and side with the law of Pennsylvania.
The second class of these circumstances is the repeal of the 21st rule, its natural
corralleries the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise, the passage in two -suc cessive Sessions of the Wilmot Proviso by the popular branch of Congress, and the
combined affiliated resolutions of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Michigan--TEN of the SOVEREIGN STATES of this Confederated Republic--Of TEN
STATES which wield votes enough to control the legislation of Congress, and to
elect a President of the United States!
We have shown that in all that relates to this unhappy controversy, the Slaveholding States have in no instance been aggressors; that the subject of quarrel has been selected by the other side; the quarrel itself begun by them; and that it has been urged in all its desperate tendencies by them. And in regard to the second class, viz : the repeal of the 21st rule, the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise, the
Wilmot Proviso, and the affiliated Legislative resolutions of these Ten States, we publish these resolutions with dates at which they were presented in the House of Representatives, as well as such defensive proceedings on the side of the Slavehold
ing States as have the sanction of Legislatures or Conventions. We have several objects in thus collecting and throwing before the public these authentic records.
One object is, to show, by comparing the dates of these measures on both sides, that what we have said above is strictly true--that Abolition and its friends are the aggressors on the Slave States; and that it was not until the combination of all par
ties with Abolition was manifested in the events of the last Session of Congress, and the co-operation of their allied States, that a single movement, even of self-defence,
was made by the Slaveholding States, either in Congress, their Legislatures, or Con tentions.

66

APPENDIX.'

On the 6th of August, 1846, being the 1st Session of the 29th Congress, whilst a bill appropriating $2,000,000 to procure a peace with Mexico wasonits passage, DA VID WTLMOT, a Democratic Representative ofPennsylvaniai offered an amendment in the following words :
" Provided further, That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servi tude in any territory on the continent of America, which shall hereafter be acquired by, or annexed to the United States by virtue of this appropriation, or in any other manner whatever, except for crimes whereof the party shall have been duly con
victed. No debate was allowed--the South was gagged, and the amendment passed by a
vote of 85 to 80. The bill failed to become a Law in the Senate; and at the next session, on the
29th December, before the Committee to which the Mexican question was regular ly referred had time to act upon the subject, Mr. PRESTON KING, of *New York, rose in his place, resumed the offensive, and gave notice of his intention to introduce a bill upon this subject, containing Mr. WJLMOT'S Proviso. On the 4th January, 1837, he asked leave of the House to introduce his bill, which was refused. On the next day he resumed his purpose, and in a long speech, in which he explained the object of the Proviso, said, in regard to a peace with Mexico, that it would be '' vain to attempt to conceal that the acquisition of new territory, at least of the Califo^ias and New Mexico ***** will be insisted upon by the
United States;" and that it was the fixed and determined purpose of the non-slave States to exclude Slaveholders with their property from that territory.
It is upon the basis laid down in the speech of Mr. KING, their organ, supported by Mr. BRINKERHOFF, of Ohio, Mr. WILMOT, of Pennsylvania, and HANNJBAL BAMLIN, of Maine, that this Abolition movement has since proceeded, conforming to its principles strictly, both in Congress and in those States which have supported it by their Legislatures. What has given to it even more ominous gravity and con sequence, is the fact, that in its support we can see (with a few honorable excep tions) no difference in the zeal and unanimity of original Abolitionists and their mo dern recruits, Democrats and Whigs. On this issue, the politicians, with very few exceptions, cohere and make one party north of Mason and Dixon's line. From them we appeal to the people, in the hope that a returning sense of justice will yet save our country from the perils they have created.
On February 1, 1847, Mr. WILMOT renewed his motion to amend the bill to ap propriate $3,000,000 for a peace with Mexico, by adding his Proviso. This was debated until the 15th, when it passed--115 to 105. During this debate, and to influence and act on the decision, Resolutions from several State Legislatures, endor sing and approving the measure, were presented in the House of Representatives-- the great States, New York and Pennsylvania, taking the lead, and presenting theirs together on the 6th February. A few days after, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Michigan followed; Massachusetts and New Hampshire also did the same. Thus the extraordinary spectacle was presented of nine confederate States, parties to a solemn Constitutional compact which guarantied equal rights to all their confederate sisters, bringing their sovereign organic influence into the National Council, to force up their representatives to an act designed to exclude the citizens of Slaveholding States from emigrating with their property into territories of the Uni ted States which are their joint and common property, in disregard of their equal rights thereto, and in violation of that compact of the Constitution which stipulates that " the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immuni ties of citizens in the several States."
But our main* purpose is to show that these measures, if successful, will subvert and override the Constitution, revolutionise and change this Government, and put the Constitution and Slavery in the power or at the disposal of Abolitionism. In short, that the Wilmot Proviso is Abolition--Abolition in the most dangerous form it has ever assumed; and that, if it is not now met, resisted and defeated, by peace ful compromise and settlement on the Missouri basis, it will end in the utter ruin of
the slaveholders, or compel them to resistance hereafter by the sword.

APPENDIX.

67

We have said that the Wilmot Proviso, if successful, subverts and overrides the Constitution. The foundation of that instrument is equality amongst the States, and equality of rights amongst the citizens; equality in the joint and common pro perty, and its benefits and enjoyment. The territories that belong now, or may be acquired, are joint and common property; and whether acquired by purchase or con quest, have been and will continue to be, at the joint and common expense of trea sure, blood and service. No slaveholder has ever proposed to exclude any citizen of any State, or even any foreigner from them; but the Wilmot Proviso excludes every slaveholder who will not renounce his property. There is thus imposed, by an act of Congress, as a fixed and fundamental condition to emigration from the Slave States, that no owner of slaves shall be permitted to go with his property into them. If we look into the Constitution for any such condition, it is nowhere to be found. In art. 6. it says: " This Constitution, &.e. shall be the supreme law of the land;" but the Wilmot Proviso interpolates, flatly usurps a power above this, to impose as a fundamental condition to the enjoyment of the joint and common pro perty of the United States what the Constitution nowhere authorizes, and against which all its principles and all sense of justice revolts. This is a condition which overrides the Constitution--is paramount to it--changes it fundamentally, and anni hilates the highest privileges of nearly one-half of this Confederacy.
The Resolutions of several of the States go further still in open words, but not further in effect and operation, when they declare that no new State shall be ad mitted which tolerates slavery. That this is the meaning and intent of the Wil mot Proviso no man doubts. The speeches of the mover of it, and of its supporters, PRESTON KING, HANNIBAL HAMLIN, BRINKERHOFF, &c. avow it. Here again they impose a condition not in the Constitution, but over and above it: " New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union," says that compact; " on condition however/' with insultieg arrogance adds the Wilmot Proviso Abolition party, "that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall be tolerated in them." This is the plain statement of the case--and now let us see what will be its opera tion.
The United States now own in Oregon and the intervening lands a vast domain, sufficient for some twenty States. The Mexican treaty may, and most probably will, add territory enough to make ten or fifteen more. All of these, this new in terpolation, or rather despot Proviso, will force to exclude slavery, and of course adds them to the non-slave States, which are already a majority, now numbering fifteen; while the slaveholding States are but fourteen, including Delaware, which is never true to them. The Constitution, as it now stands, guaranties slavery to us, and Congress has no power over it, or right to touch it, in the States. But the Constitution provides for its own amendment: two-thirds of Congress, or two-thirds of the States, may propose any amendment, which shall be valid if ratified by threefourths of the States; and here is our danger, our greatest peril. The Proviso will limit the Slave States to their present number; while new Free States, without limit, may be admitted into the Union. They not only grow in numbers and power, while the Slave States are limited and dwarfed, but they are to be formed on all sides of the Slave States, enveloping them with enemies to their institutions, and ex tending all around them the same border intrigues with their slaves that have driven Delaware into their arms, and is destroying the value of that property on their bor ders, in Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky. They will soon have the two-thirds which are required to propose the amendment; and at no very remote day will have the three-fourths necessary to carry it, which will give to their Congress the power to abolish Slavery. The end aimed at is to get the power granted by the Consti tution, not perhaps to exercise it at once, but to hold it in terrorem over us, and by it to rule and subject us to whatever measures of taxation, revenue, or expenditure their interests may dictate; and eventually perhaps, at some moment of fancied in terest, or under the excitement of feeling or fanaticism, to end our suspense by con summating the act.

68

APPENDIX.

A revolution is in progress by the Wilmot Proviso. The equality of the States1 and of American citizens is being destroyed. The balance of power between the1 Slave and Free States is being subverted. The guaranties of the Constitution, often disregarded, are about to be utterly overthrown and rendered useless j and the Constitution and Slavery are being transferred by the Wihjaot movement to Aboli tion and its allies.
Already the ten States that have spoken in theb- their resolutions, can vote 11& votes out of 224 in the House of ^Representatives--a majority of six, without calling on Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois,, Iowa or Wisconsin; and in the election of Presi dent they can cast within six votes of enough to elect. Counting the free States all together, they can command both* Houses of Congress, and elect a President now* What is the situation of the Slave States under this condition of affairs? One of imminent peril--one demanding grave counsel---one calling for new guaranties; and we say, in the noble warning words of Virginia's resolution, " that the passage of the above mentioned Proviso makes it the duty of every slave-holding State, and the citizens thereof, as they value their dearest privileges, their sovereignty, their independence, their rights of property, to take firm, united and concerted action in
this emergency.7'

Constitution of the United States, artick 4th, section 2.
A person charged in any State with treason, felony or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the Executive author ity of the State from which he fled, be delivered up to be removed to the State Having jurisdiction of the crime.
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law r regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such ser vice or labor may be due.
Jln act respectingfugitivesfrom justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters.
SEC. 3. That when a person held to labor in any of the United States or in either of the territories on the Northwest or South of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other of the said States or Territory, the person to whom such labor or service may be due,|his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize or ar^ rest such fugitive from labor, and to take him or her before any Judge of the Circuit or District Courts of the United States, residing or being within the tate, or before any Magistrate of a county, city or town corporate wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made, and upon proof, to the satisfaction of such Judge or Magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit taken before and certified by a Magistrate of any such State or Territory, that the persons so seized or arrested doth under the laws of the State or Territory from which he or she fled, owe service or labor to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such Judge or Magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive from labor, to the State or Territory from which he or she fled.
SEC. 4. That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, [his agent or attorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labor, or shallrescue sueh fugitive from such claimant, his agent or attorney, when so arrested, pursuant to the authority herein given or declared ; or shall harbor or conceal such person after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labor, as aforesaid, shall, for either of the said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars, which pen. alty may be recpveied by and for the benefit of such claimant, by action of debt, in any Court proper to try the same; saving moreover, to the person claiming such labor or service, his right of action for, or oa account of the said injuries, or either of them.
[Approved February^l% 1793.]
1 Law of Pennsylvania*
SEC. 3. That no judge of ajay of the courts of this Commonwealth, nor any alder man or justice of the peace of Aid Commonwealth, shall have jurisdiction or take cognizance of the case of any fugitive from labor from any of the United States n* *---"'

APPENDIX.

69

ties, under a certain act of Congress, passed February 12, 1793, enticed, "An act re

specting fugitives from justice and persons escaping from the service of their masters,"

nor shall any such judge, alderman or justice of the peace of this Commonwealth, issue*

or grant any certificate or warrant of removal of any such fugitive from labor under

said act of Congress, or under any other law, authority or act of Congress of ihe Uni

ted States; and if any alderman or justice of the peace of this Commonwealth, shall

take cognizance or jurisdiction of the case of any such fugitive, or shall grant or issue

any certificate or warrant of removal as aforesaid, he shall be deemed guilty of a mis

demeanor in office, and shall on conviction thereof be sentenced to pay, at the discre

tion of the Court, any sum not less than $500, nor exceeding $1000, one-half to the

party prosecuting, and the other to the use of the State,

SEC. 4. That if any person or persons claiming any negro or mulatto as a fugitive

from servitude or labor, shall under any pretence of authority whatsoever, violently

and tumultously seize upon and carry away in a riotous, violent, tumultous and un

reasonable manner, and so as to disturb or endanger public peace, any negro or mu

latto within this Commonwealth, either with or without the intention of taking such

negro or mulatto before any district or circuit judge, the person or persons so offending

shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be sentenced to pay a

fine of not less than $100, nor more than $1000, with costs of prosecution, and be

confined in the county jail for any period at the discretion of the court, not exceeding

three months.

SEC. 5. That nothing in this act shall bejconstrued to take away what is hereby de

clared to be invested in the judges of this Commonwealth, the right^ power and author

ity at all times, on application made, to issue the writ of habeas corpus, and to inquire

into the causes and legality of the arrest or imprisonment of any human being within

this Commonwealth. .

SEC. 6. It shall not be lawful to use any jail or prison of this Commonwealth for the

detention of any person claimed as a fugitive from servitude or labor, except in cases

where jurisdiction may lawfully be taken by any judge, under the provisions of this

act; and any jailer, or keeper of any prison, or other person, who shall offend against

the provision of this section, shall on conviction pay a fine of $500, one-half for the

use of the Commonwealth, and the other half to the person who prosecutes ; and shall

moreover henceforth be removed from office, and be incapable of holding such office of

jailor or keeper of a prison at any time during his natural life.

SEC. 7. That so much of the act of the General Assembly, entitled "An act for the

gradual abolition of slavery." passed March 1, 1780, as authorizes the masters or own

ers of slaves to bring and retain such slaves within this Commonwealth for the period

of six months, in involuntary servitude, or for any period of time whatsoever, and so

much of said act as prevents a slave from giving testimony against any person whatso

ever, be and the same is hereby repealed.

,

WILMOT PROVISO RESOLUTIONS,
The Wilmot Proviso.
That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any territory on the continent of America, which shall hereafter be acquired by or annexed to the United States, by virtue of this appropriation^ or in any other manner whatsoever, except for crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Provided always, That any person escaping into such territory, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the United States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and carried out of such territory to the person claiming his or her labor or service.
Resolutions of Vermont--Jan, 28, 1847. The Legislature of Vermont adopted a Resolution to the effect, that it will not give its^jpuntenance, aid or assent to the admission into the Federal Union of any new State whose Constitution tolerates slavery, and appeals to each of the other States to concur in that declaration, accompanied by another, instructing its Senators and Representa tives in Congress to use their best efforts to carry the Resolution into effect.
Resolutions of New York--Feb. 6, 1847. Resolved, That if any territory is hereafter acquired by the United States, or annexed thereto, the act by which such territory is acquired or annexed, whatever such act may

70

AiPPENDIX.

be, should contain an-unalterable fund^entail:--'miclet/bi;'^ovf!9ft)4.>^he'iN|by slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishirient for crime, shall lieforever excluded from
{he territory acquired or annexed.

, Resolutions of Pennsylvania--^Feh. 8,1847, ^
The Legislature of the Stale of Penasyltania, the nextlargestja theTJnion, adapted a Resolution requesting their Senators and Representatives in Congress to vote against any measure whatever by which territory will accrue to the Union, unless, as a part of the fundamental law upon which any compact or treaty for this purpose is based, slavery
or involuntary servitude, except for crime, shall be forever prohibited. t

Eesofeiion^^^
That while we yield to no State in me Union in our condemnation of tfie: system of
slavery, which the errors of past ages have transmitted to us, and ti$l cheerfullyco operate in any just and constitutional measures to terminate it, we are not insensible to the difficulties of the position of our Southern brethren, nor disinclined to fulfil in its true spirit every "obligation and duty imposed upon us by the terms pf our compa.ct as embodied in the Constitution of the United States ; but submitting ourselves implicitly to the requirements of that instrument, we insist upon alike compliance by other par ties to said compact with all its material stipulations, express or implied. We protest, therefore, against the acquisition of territory; by conquest or otherwise beyond the pre sent limits of the United States, for the purpose of establishing therein Slavebolding States, as deranging the balance of political power once so happily established between our confederated communities, and as manifestly in violation of the spirit and intent of the Constitution. We protest against the introduction ef slaves, upon any terms, into
any territory of the United States, whether of old or recent acquisition* where slavery does not exist, or has not immemorial! y existed ; and we hold that so far from aiming to extend an institution like slavery over a wide territory than is now pervaded by it, it is clearly the interest, no less than the duty of the Slaveholding States,io circumscribe its operation within their own limits, and to provide, if; possible, for its gradual extin guishment whenever public sentiment will permit it.

Resolutions of Ohio--Feb. 15, 1847.
iPhat the Senators arid Representatives from this State, in the Congress of the United States be and are hereby respectfully requested to procure the passage of measures in that body, providing for the exclusion of slavery from the territory of Oregon, and also from ,any other territory that now is, or hereafter may be, annexed to the United States.

Resolutions of JYeiv-Jersey-^Feb. 19, 1847.
The Resolution adopted by the Legislature of New Jersey instructs their Senators and Representatives in Congress to use their best efforts to secure, as a fundamental condition to any act of annexation of any territory hereafter to be acquired by the Uni ted States as an indemnity for claims, that slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a; punishment for crime, shall be forever excluded from the territory to be annexed.

>

Resolutions of JVcta Hampshire--Feb. 19, 1847.

ThaV the Senators and Representatives in Congress from this State be respectfully

requested to urge the passage of measures for the extinction of slavery in the District of

Columbia, foists exclusion from Oregon, and other territories, that now or at any time

hereafter m|if" belong to the United States, for all constitutional measures for the sup

pression of the domestic slave trade, and to resist the admission of any new State into

the Union while tolerating slavery.

' Resolutions of Michigan--March 1, 1847.
That in the acquisition of new territory, whether by purchase, conquest, or otherwise, we deem it the duty of the General Government to extend over the same of the Ordi nance of 1787 (being the one prohibiting slavery Northwest of the Ohio) with all its rights and privileges, (Renditions and immunities.

MesolMwns of Massachusetts----March I, 1847.

^

Resolved unanimously, That the Legislature of Massachusetts views the existence of

human slavery within tfif limits of the United States as a great calamity, and immense

moral and political evil, wfiSch ought to be abolished as soon as that end can be pro

perly and constitutionally attained,; and that its extension should be uniformly and^arn*

estly opposed by all good and patriotic men throughout the Union.

}|

- *- - ; - - 4"P.'-P-W' -'&I-X,.' . '". '-

n

Resolved unanimously, That; the people of Massachusetts will strenuQusly resist the annexation of any new territory, to this Union in which; the Ingtittitioil of slavery is to be tolerated or established; and the Legislature, in behalf of the people,of .this common wealth, do hereby solemnly protest against the acquisition of any: .'additional territory without an express provision by Congress that there shall be neither slavery nor invol untary servitude in sach territory, otherwise than for the punishment of crime.

Resolutions of Maine, passed JfygustS, 1847, with the votes tftefj&^^a, the lower?

! - . > ''" "'-.. ,

- ' House. - ' " ,'f''^^f"' f';"'''":.:-',-

Resolved, That Maine, by the action of her State Government, and by her rpife-

sentation in Congress, should abide cheerfully by the letter and spirit of the concessions

of the Constitution of the United States ; at the same time resisting firmly all demands

for. their enlargement or extension. Yeas, 122--Nays, 1.

Rgsolvedj That the sentiment pf this State is profound, sincere, and almost univer

sal, that the influence of slavery upon productive energy is like the blight of mildew;

that it is a moral and social evil; that it does violence to the rights of man, as a think

ing, reasonable and responsible being. Influenced by such considerations, this State

will oppose the introduction of slavery into any territory which may be acquired as an

indemnity for claims upon Mexico. Yeas, 124--Nays, 8.

Resolved, That in the acquisition of any free territory, whether by purchase or other

wise, we deem it the duty of the General Government to extend over the same the Or

dinance of seventeen hundred and eighty-seven, with all its rights and privileges, con

ditions and immunities. Yeas, 126--Nays, 6.

;

ANTI-WILMOT PROVISO RESOLUTIONS.

Mr. Caltouri's Resolutions, submitted in the Senate of the United States, February

' 1, 1847.

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' ; ,' ; / -."

Resolved, That the territories of the United States belong to the several States com

posing this Union, and are held by them as their joint and common property.

Resolved, That Congress, as the joint agent and representative of the States of this

Union, has no right to make any law, or do any act whatever, that shall directly, or by

its effects, make any discrimination between the States of this Union, by which any of

them shall be deprived of its full and equal right in any territory of the United States,

acquired or to be acquired.

Resolved, That the enactment of any law which should directly, or by its effects,

deprive the citizens of any of the States of this Uaion from emigrating with their pro

perty into any of the territories of the United States, will make such discrimination,

and would, therefore, be a violation of the Constitution, and the rights of the States

from which such citizens emigrated, and in derogation of that perfect equality which

belongs to,them as members of this Union, and would tend directly to subvert the Union

itself.

-

Resolved, That, as a fundamental principle in our political creed, a people in form,

ing a Constitution have the unconditional right to form and adopt the government

which they may think best calculated to secure their liberty, prosperity anj| happiness, and that in conformity thereto, no other condition is imposed by the Federal Constitu

tion on a State in order to be admitted into the Union, except that its Constitution shall

be strictly republican; and that the imposition of any other by Congress would not

only be in violation of the Constitution, but in direct conflict with the principle on

which our political system rests.

Resolutions of the Legislature of Virginia,.

Resolved, That the Government of the United States has no control directly or in

directly, mediately or immediately, over the Institution of Slavery, and that in taking

any^uch control it transcends the limits of its legitimate functions by destroying the

internal organization of the sovereignties which formed it.

Resolved, That under no circumstances will this body recognise as binding any en

actment of the Federal Government, which has for its object the prohibition of Slavery

in any Territory to be acquired either by conquest or treaty, south of the line of the

Missouri e0riipromise, holding it to be the natural and independent right of each citizen

LIBRARIES OF

te of 4he {vonfederacyv to residk^itE;,:;W&;t;j

ty:.,with. any foreign^pqiiv^jtv - ^: '.^>u ^^^\v':^1-^.( ;:'- ; ' A- c ;-
- this: Assembly holds itto berthe 4f|y of evil^.tna& in every' sefetien of- ^$ .confederacy^ if the Union is- dear |^|n7, toiogpost^the l^&sag^^f any Jaw, for whate%r {mrpflse, by which TerriljOiiry Ml& acquired- majrbe ^^e'tjltf^uch a restric-iien. '-^;^B*fe,/... ~ ' ; '' \'--"'i'^- ;^' : ( - '-'. : '-",' V^v"-^^' ''./'A-'' .; '. .-'

iJesaZueSp'i^^^'i^e passage of:tip^i|niot PrpViso by the H6ipuj^j,i3| R^ipresentative of the UnjteiP'^Mti^ makes it thes 4^ty ol^ every slaveholditig S^atei^ariit -the citizens thereof, as they; tSftte their dearest privileges' their indepeiidence ancL^tnieir.Rghta of property, to take firm, united^ and coaeerfed action in this; emergency*, -,'; 4; ;

Resolutions} o^t^e BtiftyMratic Convention of dtabctirna. J; S ^

[After adopting the four resolutions of Virginia, as above^f

'

12, Resolved, Thai as^phe ^of .the most effective modes " offirm, united: and ctfn.,

Verted (iciion" rceomme/nded'by the abov& resolutions--of resisting the interference by

.the General Goye'rnnierit ^ith a view to establish a discsririiiriation, as degrading as it is

injiarious to the Slayeholding States, the members ef tJiis Convention soUmnty pledge

themselves,W, eaeh other, and recpmpiend to their Fellow-citizens ia those Stalesj to

withTiold their votes for the office of President of the United States from a!ny citi?ett

tcho shall not previously to fh$ election distinctly, unequivocally, and publicly avowJhia

of the* Democratic Cmventwn of Georgia.

Ifegolved, fhto the Democratic party, while it asserts the rights of citizens of any

tO;settle in any of the territories of the United States with their properly, yet in

, the Spirit of niutaal '" concession" in which our Union originated, and by which alone it

can be preserved, we are still willing to abide by the provisions and the geographica.1

line; of the Rlisspuri Compromise.

Resolved, That we adopt the four following resotutiona as;passed by the General As

sembly of Virginia as amended.

;_

[Arid after adopting here the four resolutions of Virginia as above,]

Eesolved further by this Convention, That the Democratic party of Georgia will give

their support t6 ho candidate'for the Presidency of the United States who dpes nbt un-

e^BditiOnally, cfearly and unequivocally, declare his opposition to tthe principles and

provisions of the Wilmot Proviso.

END OF THE APPENDIX.

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