present height since the condition of the slave has been confessedly greatly ameliorated. Now, as by one change in popular sentiment the present sympathy has arisen, by another change it may pass away. The annals of mankind abound with examples of strong popular feeling in one country, or one age, which have no existence in another. In the first years of the French revolution, the people of France were desirous of conferring civil liberty on all the other nations of Europe, and were even willing to encounter the evils of war to effect their purpose. Yet not a vestige now remains of that popular zeal: nay, in the alarm which every man, who had any thing to lose, felt at the frantic schemes of the Red Republicans, in 1849, they were willing, for present safety, to give up their own share of civil liberty. We know, too, that nations whose fields have been deluged in blood, in their contests about religious creeds, have forgotten these controversies; and that Catholics and Protestants, once in deadly hostility, are now settled down in a state of peaceful indifference. Is the question which now divides so many of our citizens, of a more enduring character? Perhaps not. The posterity of some of those who are most bigoted in favor of negro emancipation may reason somewhat to this effect: Some of our undiscriminating ancestors, in their love of civil liberty, did not see that, for their sentiment to have any merit, it must be qualified by justice, order, and obedience to the laws. Liberty, in its largest sense, is the desire to do what we please; and it is this desire which animates the tyrant, the criminal, and, in short, every violator of the law. We must not fall into the error of the miser, who values money for its own sake, and not for its uses. Liberty is a means, not an enda most powerful means, indeed, of advancing human hap piness, when placed under proper restraints. But, in the freest countries in existence, a very large majority of the community are subjected to the will of others, and have a very limited share of liberty. Thus, women are there deprived of most civil rights, and children of still more. Every soldier and sailor is placed under a despot, to whom he must yield implicit obedience. These men, however, may be said to be paid for their services; but so is the slave, in the food and raiment he receives. Theirs, too, it will be said, is a voluntary servitude, the consequence of their own free contract. Perhaps not. They might have yielded to the despotism of want; and though their subjection was the consequence of their own contract, that of children is not. The Legislature subjects all these classes to the control of others; and in some countries it goes a step further, and subjects another class to still greater restrictions, by establishing slavery. It is of the essence of sovereignty to make that distribution of political power which its own sense of expediency recommends; and for others to oppose this exercise of its authority, is to resist its right of self-government. What would those, who deny the right of a State to establish domestic slavery, say, if another State should interfere with their municipal laws, and insist on reforming them because they did not accord with the reformer's notions of propriety? Yet the two cases would be essentially the same. It is vain to say that women and children have their rights, which the law protects, but that slaves have no rights whatever. As to our most valued rights-the choice of food, clothing, repose, amusement, and the power of locomotion-women and children are often as effectually deprived of them as is the slave; and where they are not, the difference is merely one of degree, and not of kind. To deny, then, to a State the power to withhold from a portion of its inhabitants the privileges of freemen, is to deny to it the right of a sovereign State. It is essential that the Legislature should make that distribution of civil rights and power which it thinks will best promote the public welfare and safety should give a large portion to one class, which is comparatively small one-a less portion to the females-a still less to the children- and the least of all (only, perhaps, the protection of life) to the slave: trusting mainly for his well-being, like that of the children, to the common feelings and sympathies of our nature, and which experience tells us is, as a general rule, a sufficient reliance. Such are the considerations which now seem conclusive with one-half of the nation, whose force will be admitted by a large proportion of the other half, and the justice of which may be recognized by the sons of those who now look at the institution through the distempered medium of misapplied sympathies. Yet, surely, the welfare of the white, is entitled to at least as much interest and regard as that of the African, race; but in the new-born sympathy for the one, the well-being and safety of the other is entirely disregarded. This is the view of the question in the slaveholding States. Their citizens were born and bred in communities allowing domestic slavery, which the present generation had no agency in producing. They believe, on no very doubtful reasoning, that, if the other States were permitted to intermeddle with this institution, the emancipation of the slave would be the certain consequence; and that an amalgamation of the two races would, sooner or later, be the result of that emancipation. Now, believing the blacks to be an inferior race, as they honestly do, they look at this issue as the direst of all alternatives; and they are ready to resist it at every hazard, and to take every precaution against its slightest approach. They thus act with more confidence, because they regard the course of their opponents as unjust, and in conflict with the positive stipulations of those who formed the present Union. But suppose that the present unfortunate discrepancy on negro slavery should continue unchanged; that the manufacturing States will forget that they now have the advantages of the free trade and restrictive systems united, which they must lose in case of a separation — which consideration also applies to the agricultural States and that numbers will be found, willing to exchange their present blessings of free government, economy, and peace, for dictatorships, heavy taxes, and war can it be believed that a majority, or even a large number of the States, will be thus oblivious of their interests and safety? Will Kentucky and Tennessee, and the States north-west of the Ohio, and those now rising up on the west of the Mississippi, to whom the navigation of that river is of such vital importance, consent to have their access to the ocean liable to be cut off by the naval power of some of the Atlantic States, or to hold it dependent on the favor of a foreign Power. They will have the means of arresting the suicidal scheme, and they will not be slow to use it. They will pour down like an avalanche on the Atlantic malcontents, and crush the treasonable project as soon as it is hatched. Their power, thus attached to the Union by the strongest of all ties, self-interest, will be as resistless as it is loyal. The single State of Illinois can support a larger, perhaps twice as large, a population as all New England; and several of its neighboring States are nearly as powerful. Besides, if all other difficulties were removed, where is the line of separation to be drawn, and what State would consent to be placed on the frontier, and to bear the brunt of those wars which are certain to arise between communities connected by neighborhood, and disconnected in every thing else? The scheme, then, of breaking up this great Republic into fragments is, fortunately, as impracticable as it is wicked and foolish. It is, therefore, most gratifying to believe that the great mass of the American people will ever agree with the solemn warnings of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and of their successors, and, indeed, of every statesman entitled to public confidence, that our welfare and safety, as well as national greatness, are all dependent on the continuance of our political Union. The author has brought to a close a work undertaken, he fears rashly, at a time of life when men commonly seek repose rather than labor. In tracing the leading acts and fortunes of our great political Confederacy, during the first half century of its existence, his aim was to speak of its merits and defects, its good and evil tendencies, as truth and justice seemed to require; and his reprehensions have sometimes extended to popular men and measures. He has thus endeavored to redeem a pledge given at the commencement of his labors, and without which those labors would have been of little worth. Besides, it has been more than once said that, with all our boasted liberty, criticisms on VOL. IV.-28 |