CHAPTER XII. Abolition of Slavery in the United States. Objects and designs of the Abolitionists. WE will now consider the scheme of emancipation—a scheme which, but a few years since, found our country united, tranquil and happy, and which, in that brief period, has planted in her bosom distrust, jealousy, rage and terror-which has endangered the industry of the North, the security of life in the South, and has shaken to its very centre the Government of our common country. The object of those who have espoused the cause of the slave is averred to be emancipation. They pronounce his bondage a sin against heaven, and claim the freedom of every negro in the countryyoung and old, male and female, ignorant and educated. Universal and sweeping emancipation is the object of their efforts; and they express their determination never to remit their exertions until the two millions of slaves in the South are released from all restraint. This emancipation is claimed immediately. They will not submit to any gradual measures for the attainment of their wishes. The word is to be spoken by these necromancers in philanthropy, and the chains of the 2,250,000 slaves are to be shivered, as by one blow. The negro is to be instantaneously released, and turned forth, without the intelligence to direct his conduct, the habits of self restraint to withhold him from the brutal gratification of animal passions, or even the means of saving himself from starvation. When asked, what will be the consequences of so mad and precipitate a movement, they inform us that consequences do not enter into their calculations-slavery is a sin, of which the slave-holder should repent, not gradually, but at once- -the consequences of his repentance rest with Providence. That we may not misrepresent their views on this important point, we give the following extract from one of the publications of the American Anti-Slavery Society. "The safety of the remedy. Oh, but immediate emancipation would be unsafe, the slave would butcher his master and fill the land with rapine and murder.' 6 Suppose, said Mr. S. the intelligence should reach this city to-day that the slaves had risen in insurrection and were scattering dismay and death through the South. Would not the veriest child know the cause? THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR THEIR FREEDOM' would be the universal cry. Give the slave his freedom, then; will he fight because you give it to him? First, he fights because he is robbed of liberty, and when it is restored, he fights because he's got it." The following is from the Anti-Slavery Reporter: Gradual Abolition, an indefinite term, but which is understood to imply the draining away drop by drop of the great ocean of wrongs,-plucking off at long intervals some straggling branches of the moral Upas-holding out to unborn generations the shadow of a hope which the present may never feel,-gradually ceasing to do evil; gradually refraining from robbery, lust and murder: -in brief, obeying a short-sighted and criminal policy rather than the commands of God.” The immediate emancipation, thus claimed for the blacks, is required to be unconditional. They admit no restraint upon the negro. He is to be turned loose at once. No barrier, no bond, no check,-nothing to guard the negroes from their own improvidence and passions, nothing to protect the master or his wife and daughters from the savage passions, the lust, revenge and cruelty of the brutal and unchained slave. The abolitionists have no doubt read of the Roman Senators who opened their gates to the Gauls, and received them in state, expecting to subdue their fierce pássions into awe and gentleness; they have perhaps heard also of the fanatic, who, in the confidence of religious insanity, caused himself to be exposed to lions. They have, however, it seems, forgotten that the Romans were slaughtered and their city burned; and that the poor bigot was devoured without scruple by the hungry lions. They would, with the same confidence and the same wisdom, unloose the ignorant negro upon the fair and gentle ones of the South, and, standing at a safe distanec, would watch the result of the fearful experiment! The following is another extract from the publication quoted above. "Turning loose. 'But would you turn the slave loose?' Loose! What does the objector mean? Turn the slave loose! No. We turn freemen loose. We dont unchain the tiger, but we strike off his chain, and by that act make him a lamb, and then turn him loose." Such is the childish and wretched device by which the abolitionists evade an objection so startling, so awful, so full of calamity to the race, that it would shake a fiend from his purpose, and visit his bosom with the strugglings of remorse and compassion. The abolitionist, however, when told that he is about to deluge his native land with blood, receives the warning with a quibble, and turns tranquilly to his work of horror. The emancipation, thus urged, is expected to be attained without compensation to the master. It is of no consequence that not merely individuals, but States, would be thus beggared; that those gentle beings, who have been nurtured with all the solicitude of affection, and treated with the homage of Southern chivalry-that those fair creatures, whose guardians Would not permit the winds of Heaven thus fostered, are, by Northern philanthropists to be plunged into the most sordid poverty, and, as they are inferior to the blacks in capacity for toil, to be degraded beneath those who have heretofore ministered to their wants. The slave-holder, says the abolitionist, is a "robber," a "felon," a "manstealer," &c., and has no right to expect that, when deprived of his victim, he will be paid for his past crimes in the shape of compensation or ransom! The fanatics are marvellously philanthropic: they would beggar and ruin the citizens of the South to realize their childish abstractions; but have not yet attained that point of delusion which would prompt them to bear a share of the burthen. Men can afford to be charitable, who give away the property of others; and none urge self-denial so ardently as those who are not called upon to participate in the sacrifice. The abolitionists, in advocating emancipation without compensation, do not forget, but do not regard, the fact, that the slaves have fallen into the hands of their present owners as property, that the laws of the Southern States, the laws of the General Government, and even the laws of the Northern States, regard them and respect them, as property. These facts are wholly immaterial to the abolitionists. The obligation of justice, the sanction of the laws, the rights of humanity, are subjects of equal indifference to those who are prepared to stride over the graves of millions of their brethren, over the ruins of their Government and country, to the consummation of their visionary and perilous schemes. But the abolitionists do not pause at emancipation. Their demands go further. They require for the slave, not merely his freedom, but an elevation to all the political privileges of his master. It may be observed that the abolition party is constituted mostly of men, who are opposed to an extension of the political powers of the whites, to universal suffrage, and to that policy which contemplates political equality; they have generally been found opposed to what are considered the liberal doctrines and measures of this country, and are, in some cases, the remains of those who opposed the American revolution: yet, when the blacks are interested, their fears of popular power vanish; the ignorance of the blacks, their incapacity, their want of political or moral principles constitute no objections to their political elevation. This disposition, it will be seen, is manifested throughout, by the abolitionists. They have, from some strange perversion of nature, acquired an affection for the black which has blunted their sensibilities for their own race; and, in case of opposing interests, they uniformly espouse the cause of the negro against the white man. In claiming, for the blacks of the South, political equality with the whites, they of course include the |