Plymouth Journal, Volume 1, Number 1, Plymouth, Marshall County, 13 November 1844 — Page 4

LIBERTY. The fourth page of this No. is devoted to our Anti-Slavery friends of the Liberty Party. The Liberty Party in this country is a very respectable party as to numbers, considering the opposition from interested sources, and the manifold embarrassment attendant upon the assumption of its measures to eradicate a constitutional evil. If we remember correctly, this party was first formed in Massachusetts, some time in '39. In '40 it was organized in New York and Ohio: and in '41 the subject of emancipation became a party question in this State. The number of votes polled in this state at the various elections since the formation of the party, we have not the means before us of determining; but in this county the party vote in '41 was 7, in '42, 23; in 43, 33; in '44, 40; and in the late election 54, besides some 10 or 12 known not to have been at the polls. The number of votes polled by the party in the United States in '40, were, if we remember correctly, something near 7000; tn '42, 57,000, showing the rapid increase, in two years, of 50,000 votes,and it is supposed by many intelligent men, that the returns of the election just closed, will show an increase of 50,000 more. In relation to the intrinsic truth contained in the principles which actuate the members of that party, we do not hesitate to say, that they are eternal; that the wiser and better portion of mankind in all ages, have deprecated the violation of them; and that such violation is repugnant to our nature.

In our next number we design presenting the principles and creed of this party. Below, is an address of the Liberty men in Virginia, showing the efforts there being made for the emancipation of public sentiment in favor of slave emancipation. An apology is perhaps necessary for its occupying so large a space; being more than we design generally devoting to either party. From Facts for the People. TO THE PEOPLE OF VIRGINIA. Friends and fellow-citizens: We address you on a topic of the deepest interest, and the most vital importance, and we entreat your patient and candid attention. We shall certainly present to you facts and arguments worthy of your most serious consideration. Many of you will, perhaps, dissent from the conclusions to which we come; but only a few, if any, will deny that a necessity exists, and becomes daily more and more imperious, of examining the matters to which we design to call your attention, and of preparing, at least, for definite action in regard to them. At the period of the adoption of the Constitution. Virginia was the leading State of America. In 1790, her population was 747,620, not quite one fifth of the entire population of the United States. Pennsylvania stood next, but separated by a wide interval, with 431,373 inhabitants. Still more remote in the rear, followed New York, with only 340,120. Ohio, of which almost the entire territory had then been recently ceded by Virginia to the Union, was not yet a State. At one or two spots only, within its limits, had the arm of the settler levelled the forest and let in the sun. But in the career of prosperous advancement, in population, in wealth, in all that constitutes the greatness and the glory of States, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, have successively outstripped Virginia and have taken position in her front. Why is this? No State enjoyed more natural advantages than ours. Our mountains are stored with mineral wealth; our valleys produce in exuberant abundance every growth of a temperate and salubrious clime. Our springs invite to their healing waters the searchers or health from every quarter. Embraced on the east by the Ocean, and on the northwest by the Ohio; the commerce of the old world and the new, was within our easy reach. Why then, we repeat, has Virginia failed to fulfil the destiny which these auspicious circumstances marked out as hers? You know the reason, fellow citizens. You know that the demon which has mocked the hopes of our fathers, which has held back our State from a prosperous career, which has degraded her from the first to the fourth State of the Republic, is Negro Slavery. We earnestly ask you to look this paralyzing curse in the face, and to address yourselves like men, to serious and united effort for its removal. We believe that the time has come for such an effort. We propose to give you our reasons for this belief, and point out the measures from which we expect deliverance.

We are the more powerfully impelled

to do this, because we have noticed of late years the promulgation and progress of alarming doctrines on the subject of Slavery. A few have boldly proclaimed slavery to be a blessing, and its protection, nurture and extension, to be among the chief duties of our National Government. They assert that slavery is the foundation of civil liberty, and the corner stone of our republican institutions:-an enormous and most detestable heresy! Others, admitting that slavery is an evil, contend that it is ineradicable, and insist, therefore, that it should be let alone. The distinguished leader of the Whig party, and his advocates generally, are patrons of this opinion. In a speech before the Senate, of the United States, Mr. Clay declared that, in his judgment, the liberty of the Anglo Saxon and African races in this country, "were imcompatible;" that two hundred years of legislation had "sanctioned and sanctified" negro slavery; and that, were he a citizen of a planting Slate, he would "oppose any scheme whatever, of emancipation, gradual or immediate." His leading organ in Virginia, the Richmond Whig, in a late article, harmonizing with these opinions, denounced all plans for the removal of slavery as visionary. Well may we be uneasy, apprehensive, and full of fearful forebodings, when we hear such doctrines put forth in such high quarters. They are full of evil omen for our beloved country. Acquiescence in the. continued and permanent existence of slavery in our land, is a fatal symptom of the decay of the spirit of Liberty among us. Such was not the temper of our fathers. Doctrines like these constituted no part of the political faith of Jefferson, or Madison, or Henry, or Wythe. Let us recall to your recollection, fellow citizens, the testimonies of our Statesmen on this sub ject. In his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson said: "The whole commerce between master and slave, is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one side, and degrading submission on the other. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy, who can retain his manners and morals undepraved in such circumstances." Judge Tucker, in a published letter to a member of the General Assembly in 1807, speaks of the "baneful effect of domestic slavery on our moral character, and of its inconsistency with the truest principles of Republicanism." Mr. Johnson, in the Convention for revising the Constitution in 1829, said, "Slavery lias been the foundation of that impiety and dissipation which has been so much disseminated among our countrymen." Mr. Moore, in the Legislature of 1832, siid, "l think that slavery as it exists among us, may be regarded as the heaviest calamity, which has ever befallen the human race." Hear, also, a statesman of Kentucky, Thomas F. Marshall, in his letters on the act of 1833, remarked as follows; "I have said that I considered negro slavery, a political misfortune. The phrase is too mild. It is a cancer, a slow consuming cancer a withering pestilence, an unmitigated curse. * * * I was born in a slave State--I was nursed by a slave, --my life his been saved by a slave. * * * I was never North of the Chesapeake Bay. My friends, my family, my sympathies, my education are from Virginia. Yet I consider negro slavery as a political cancer and a curse and she has taught me so to consider it." Nor did the statesmen of Virginia confine themselves to simple expressions of hostility to slavery. They proposed, they advocated, and they anticipaited the adoption of plans for its removal. Jefferson declared his belief, that the spectacle of Justice in conflict with Avarice, for the overthrow of slavery would soon be witnessed in Virginia. Washington expressed his conviction that the day when Virginia would have laws for emancipation was "not remote." Tar from desiring that tho powers of the general government should be used to uphold slavery, Virginia did all she could to impress upon that government, the character of hostility to the system. The first American Congress assembled in 1774. Our Fathers, then convened for the purpose of conferring together on the best means of deliverance from British aggression, upon their own rights, were reminded, naturally and necessarily, of the rights of the enslaved. Acting under a deep sense of the responsibility which their own relations to slavery imposed upon them, they subscribed and published a solemn declaration and covenant against the trafic in human flesh. These were their words: "We will not import or purchase any slave imported after the first day of December next, (1774) after which we will wholly discontinue tho slave trade, and will neither hire our vessels, nor sell our com-

modities or manufactures to those who

are concerned in it." This was the first testimony of the American, People against slavery. It was a solemn testimony under the most affecting circumstances; Virginia, through her delegates united in it, and was bound by it. In less than two years afterwards, when, the people had been driven by the pride and violence.of transatlantic tyranny to the last appeal of Nations, the Congress of the Colonies, invoking the witness of Heaven to the rectitude of their intentions, put forth the justly celebrated Declaration of Independence.--Scorning to place the vindication of their own resistance to oppression upon lower and narrower ground, they planted them selves at once upon the immoveable foundation of the inalienable rights of man. "We hold" said they, "these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This declaration pledged the nation anew against slavery. It announced for the first time to the world, the doctrine of the equal right of all men to Liberty, as the fundamental principle of a national creed. It upheld this right to liberty, not as derived from any constitution of human government, or as liable to be divested by any human law, but as part of the constitution of human nature, ordained by the author of the code of Heaven. Let it be remembered, that this declaration was the composition ot a Virginia Statesman, conspicuous for his detestation of slavery, and that it was no where more vigorously supported and defended than in Virginia, and by Virginians. The war of Independence at length ceased. But while the echoes of battle yet reverberated from our hills, and lingered along our valleys, the Congress put forth a final address to the people.--"Let it be remembered," they said, "that it has been the pride and boast of America, that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature.--By the blessing of the Author of these rights, on the means exerted for their defence, they have prevailed against all opposition, and form the basis of thirteen States. No instance has heretofore occurred, nor any instance be expected hereafter to occur, in which the unadulterated forms of Republican government can pretend to so fair an opportunity of justifying themselves by their fruits. -- This address was also the composition of a Virginia Statesman, and adopted, as the voice of the Congress, by Virginia votes. Not many years elapsed before an opportunity was presented to the American Congress, of giving to the world a signal proof of its fidelity to that doctrine of human rights, to which the nation stood thus solemnly pledged, That immense Territory, stretching from the western limits of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi, and from the Ohio to the Lakes, had become, by the cession of the several claimant States, the undisputed domain of the nation. In making these cessions, Virginia took the lead, claiming under her charter almost the whole of what is now Ohio, Indiana, and IIIinois. She magnanimously surrendered her pretentions to the common good, stipulating only, that the States to be erected within the ceded limits, should be republican and sovereign. The acquisition of the North Western Territory devolved on Congross the duty of providing a system of law for the government of its inhabitants. But Congress did more. It promulgated in 1787, an ordinance, for which the fundamental principles, for which the war of Independence had been waged, were established, as the unaltered basis of the laws and constitution of the States to be formed within the territory. This ordinance announced its purpose to be, the establishment of "the principles of civil and religious liberty" in the new States, and, as necessary to this end, it declared that there should be ''neither slavery nor involuntary servitude within the territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes." In preparing this remarkable instrument Mr. Jefferson took an important part. For adopting it the Vote of Virginia was unanimous. In fact but a single negative was opposed to its passage, and that solitary voice proceeded from the State of New York. That so signal a monument of the fidelity of our fathers to tho pledges in the covenant of 1774, and in the declaration of 1776, has been preserved, furnishes fit occasion of devout thanksgiving to Almighty God. It was the last important act of the Congress of the confederation, and well does it correspond with the solemn covenant which was the first. The framing of the Constitution of the United States, was contemporaneous with the promulgation of the ordinance. It is sometimes said that the constitution guarantees slavery; but the assertion is a libel on the memory of our Fathers,. Tho original articles submitted by the

convention for ratification to the States,

did, undoubtedly, notice the fact of the existence of slavery in the several States, under the State law, and provided for the representation of three-fifths of the slaves in Congress; but there was, then, no provision in the instrument which made it the duty of the National Government to maintain slavery in the States. Much less was there any provision which would warrant Congress in establishing or continuing slavery in any tertitory or district within its exclusive jurisdiction. But the constitution after being ratified by the States, was amended by the People in 1791. One of the amendments proposed by Virginia, declared explicitly that "no person,"--not ''no freemen" or "no citizens,"-but "no person," "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law." It has been urged that the continuance of slavery, even under State law, is incompatible with this amendment. Without stopping to discuss the validity of this argument, we may at least assert that the National Government cannot by any law or treaty create or continue slavery within the limits of its peculiar jurisdiction. The language of the documents which we have cited, the policy of the government as indicated and settled by the ordinance of 1787, the history of the times, the recorded opinions of all of the leading men of that day, and the provisions of the Constitution itself, clearly show that it was the understanding of the people, that the powers of the government should never be exerted for the support or extension of slavery. It is not unknown to you, fellow-citizens, that a large and rapidly increasing portion of the America People, feel deeply aggrieved by the departure of the General Government from this plain, salutary and indispensable principle. They complain that slavery has been continued in the District of Columbia, by acts of Congress without constitutional authority; that Louisiana and Florida have been successfully acquired at the common expense, and that slavery has been continued in both by Congress, in manifest disregard of Treaty stipulations, and in plain violation of the provisions of the constitution. They complain, moreover, that the National Government has strenuously exerted itself to extend by negotiation, the markets for the products of slave-labor, while the interests of free-labor have been slighted; that the offices of the nation have been chiefly filled by slaveholders; and tnat Slavery rather than Liberty is the leading object of Governmental care. It is very manifest to any one who will examine the history of the country that these complaints are not without foundation. They daily become louder and deeper. They compel us to look forward to a dissolution of the Union, as an event almost certain to occur, if the wrongs complained of be not redres sed. And why should not these complaints be heard? Whv should not these wrongs be redressed? What interest have the people of Virginia in this perversion of the powers of the General Government to the maintenance of a system which has crippled her energies and destroyed her prosperity! What interest have the people of Virginia in providing a market for the slave-grown sugar of Louisiana, or foreign markets for the slave-grown cotton of Carolina and Georgia, at an expense to the nation, of millions of dol Iars per annum? Is there anything in the system of slaveholding so attractive or so dear, that for it we are willing to give up substantial wealth, honor and power? Does any body in Virginia believe that slaveholding is right of itself? That it will bear the test of the golden rule, "whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them?" There may be here and there an individual slave holder, who will maintain that he is warranted in holding slaves by the precepts of the Christian religion. But such persons are few. Most admit the wrong and deplore the evil. But, they say, what can we do? We answer to the individual slaveholder, cease from doing what you feel to be wrong. Give fair wages to your laborers, and let their services be not compulsory but voluntary. We answer to the people collectively, repeal the laws which sanction slaveholding. Purify the statute from all en actments which authorizes one man to take another man's work without wages. Look at the monster evil, Slavery, direct ly in the face and go about getting rid of it, as you would in the case of any other statute-made evil. Surely the men of Western Virginia, especially, ought to consider this matter. In all the Western District, there were according to the census of 1840, only 53, 727 slaves, while the free population was 371,570. to the Eastern District, the free white population was 369.389, while the slaves numbered 395,250. The Western Dis trict has, in the House of Delegates 56 Representatives - the Eastern 78. In the Senate the Western has 13 Representatives - the Eastern 19. The odious

principle of representation for slaves, which has been allowed to prevail in tho

National Governments, prevails also in the States, and with the same consequences. The great interests of the majority concerned in free labor, are sacrificed to the claims and caprices of the minority interested in the slave labor. The political power of the State is East of the Blue Ridge. Ought it so to be? We appeal to the candid and dispassionate among the slaveholders themselves, and repeat, ought this so to be? We appeal to the non-slaveholding Farmers, Me-, chanics, Laborers, and other industrious citizens of the State, and ask them if a system which, subjects the majority to the minority, which crushes labor, and makes it dishonorable, which must forever prevent the establishment of an efficient systern of general education, ought to be upheld by them? The whole number of slaveholders in the State, does not exceed, by a liberal computation, 50,000. That these may divide among themselves, the ownership of 450,000 colored laborers, and carry on a trade in their industry and their persons, the rights and interests of the non-slaveholders are comparatively disregarded, and that too, without conferring any real benefit on the slaveholders themselves. In view ot these facts, fellow citizens do you again ask "vvhat can we do?"--We repeat our answer, vote against slavery! --Remember what Washington said, "there is but one proper and effectual mode by which the overthrow of slavery can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority, and this, so far as my suffrage will go, shall not be wanting." Adopt this noble resolution and act upon it. Remember that slavery is the mere creature of legislation; that this stupendious system of wrong which threatens destruction to the property and and rights of all classes, was created by positive law, depends upon positive law for its continuance from day to day, and must perish, when the support of positive law shall be withdrawn. Now, who made-- who maintain this positive law? You, fellow citizens, you! Ye are the men upon whose votes this dreadful system stands; without whose votes it can in no way be maintained. If you desire the removal of this curse-- if you desire the extirpation of this cancer preying upon your prosperity, your peace, your honor, you must vote against it. There is no other sure way. If you desire the laws which establish slavery repealed, you must send men to your Slate LegisIature, who will boldly advocate and vote for their repeal. Are you Christians, and do you regard that system, which, in the language of an eloquent Kentuckian, "abrogates the clearest Iaw of Nature. and outrages all decency and justice," as the manifest violation of the law of love revealed in the New Testament, and will you not so much as attest the sincerity of your professions by a vote? Are you patriots. who, in common with the distinguished men we have quoted, look upon slavery as the bane of all progress, the deadly poison of the State, and will you not put forth so much of effort to free yourselves from this dreadful evil, and your children from the thick thronging dangers which gloomily threaten in the future, as to vote at the ballot box for your own deliverance and theirs? An example is already before you. In half the States a party has been organized, which taking the name, and animated by the spirit of Liberty, plants itself upon the doctrines of the Constitution and the precepts of Christianity, and demands Freedom and Just Wages for all. Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky has described this party in these words, "Then comes the Liberty Party, embracing a large portion of the virtue, intelligence, and legal knowledge, the Christianity and patriotism of the North. Taking the ground, first occupied by Washington himself, that slavery is the creature of law, and should be abolished by law, they appeal to the ballot-box, not to the bayonet--like the great Irish Reformer, having faith in the power of reason, truth and virtue, they expect to achieve a bloodless revolution, more glorious than any yet arising from force of arms." This party, which is, in truth, only the party of 1776 revived, was organized in 1840. In thnt memorable year, when the tempest of political excitement swept through the land, and the candidates of the Whig and Democratic parties had been compelled to do homage to slavery, the political Baal of our country, there were found seven thousand men who bowed not the kneel In 1840 the proportion of their votes to the entire number of electors in the Union, was one in four hundred --in 1843 it was one in forty. At the same rate of progress they will elect their Presidential candidate, whoever he may be, in 1848. * * * * * * * * Great and good men wiII look for their characters in the writings and precepts of philosophers; for they know very well that wise books are always true friends.