Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1859 — Political. [ARTICLE]

Political.

[From the Washington Union. DELAY OF ABOLiTiOXiSM IN NEW ES« LAN®. Dear Brother: I have read your speech of the 2 Ist ultimo, delivered in the House of | Representatives. It has points of consider- j able smartness, and will be praised by your p aitizans as a very clever eit’ort; but I see no other effect that it can produce but to irritate the South, and alieniate one section of the Union still more from the other. ■ Have we iwj at the North stimulated our own self-rigpTeousness, in contrast with the sins of the-South, quite up to, or beyond the healthy point! Would it not be well for us, ' for a time, to look more at our own failings, and at t'e virtues of our brethern at the I South! You speak of the .change of toni and sen- ! tiinent that has taken pi t, e during the last twenty-five years on the subject of slavery. I plead guiity to the truth of this charge, it was one oi the dreams cd' my e.-rly lite, that the condition of mankind might be greatly improved by sudden political changes. The cry of the slave came to my yi.tit'uul ear, wafted by the eloquent breath of eye-wit-nesses, from Virginia and from New Jersey. Almost every man at the South, at that time, admitted that slavery was an evil, moral,social and political; the horrors of the middle passage, the barbarian cruelties of Jamaica came to us across the ocean; Wilberforce and Clarkson had acquired a world-wide fame by their singular devotion to the abolition of the slave-trade; the assault was soon made upon slavery itself in the British West Indies, and the first of August, 1838, was en- ■ tere in the calender as one of the holy days j of the year. Campbell painted the wild chieftain on his ' native plains, s • noble, so free, so happy—- | caught, chained, doomed, suffering, till the i hurricanes in the West Indies were commissioned to avenge his wrongs. The plaintive Cowper wept out his compassion in the touching lines, “I would not have a slave for ■all the gold that sinews bought and sold have ever earned,” and these tdries of suffering, ; of compassion, of pity, were echoed by ei cry . harp and re-echoed by orator and preacher, ! till the whole atmosphere of New England was vocal with the cries of the slave. I I have done my full share of it; hut greater I men have been mistaken, and have, in riper years, been compelled to revise and revoke the opinions of earlier days. Burke once was enraptured with the voice of Liberty, as she cried from across the Channel, but in the full strength of his manhood he was compelled t j denounce the crimes committed in her name. Sir Janies Mclntosh wrote his j Vindicial Gallica, but was compelled, by a i long experience and wide observation, to cancel the opinion of early life by those of I maturer years. I am compelled to cancel many things that I have said on the subject of slavery, and substitute for them the opinions of riper age. I might have once said what, or nearly what, you have said in your late speech in Congress, though I think I should have left out those portions which servo no other end than simply to irritate, without convincing. But my convictions at the present time are, not only that the slaveholders have a complete vindication of their present position, but they are entitled to be looked upon as benefactors to the country and to the human race. The only ground on which I can claim their patience and forbearance toward us meddling with their affairs, and for abusing them a much as we have, and as some still continue to <’<>, is this: They gave us the false premia 'i wo reasoned correctly to falsi-con- ' rhey gave away their case by conces or if slavery be a sin, a wrong, or an evil, no fair mind can re-

sist the conclusion that efforts ought to be made, as soon as possible, to do it away. This philosophy, that slavery is wrong, sprang up in Virginia, and was adopted and encouraged in nearly all the slave States, and the seed was thence, in connection with -the correct and grand principles of human government, scattered wide over the free States. They have had their growth, and nbw it is not a little difficult to pull them up; but they shall take the wheat with the;§ also. The South are impregnable. The Constitution protects them, the Bible protects thfem, and the experience of mankind protects them. Our fathers made a covenant with their fathers. They came into the Union with their African slaves, on terms of equality with us, and with all the rights and privileges that we can claim under the same instrument. They would make no covenant except upon terms of equality. We accepted those terms; we could get no better to-day; and yet we should be glad to make it, if it were not made, or to renew it, if broken, and on the same conditions we now have.

The South claims the right |o go into new territoiy and try the new land with their slaves, till the territory becomes a sovereign State, and then bow to its will, as before all other sovereigns. This is the jpst and equitable claim, founded on a fair iijtjrpretcali of the Constitution. Slavery should be permitted to flow by natural laws to regionfor which it is best adapted. It will go nowhere else. You could not force it into New nor keep it there if i"troduced. The experiment has been tried, and failed. Slave-y was given up n the North- ■ ern States nut by the force of moral but not- , ural laws. ! It is true the discussion of the last twenty; I five years have produced a great deal ot sen--1 timent on the subject of slavery in the Northern States; but you know lu.w utterly barren of any good results it has been to the Afri-i can. In words— and because their number is small, and will continue to lie small —we have “in the extreme North given them the rights of citizenship and equality; but in Works we deny them. The most respectable colored men in Boston would not be permitted to hire or to own and quietly enjoy a pew in the broad aisle of any fashionable church. In the West, where vour soil is more fertile, and where more free colored men would be likely to go, you are more stringent; and the black laws of Ohio, Illinois, lowa and Oregon, and the still more expulsive Topeka Constitution of Kansas—for which, I believe, you and all your Re- ■ publican associates voted—proclaim, as with trumpet-tongue, the innate, and ineradicable prejudice against the African, lurking, as it still does,in the bosom of those, whose tongues are eloquent for his rights. I am not a little surprised at the manner v. n : ch you speak of Noah. The Bible cai'ia him a “just man, and perfect in his generation,” and not because he, by divine inspiration and by divine co,, nand, foretold the slavery o! the children of Ham, you give him some very hard thrusts, and leave him on the pages of your speech with a character by no means so fair as that given h'm by the sacred historian. Was Noah in the way of vour theory, that you strike at him so vigorously, as though you would hew him down! You say he mistook Canaan for Ham. Suppose he did, the prediction and the curse rest somewhere—on some nation. The principle is the same in the divine administration. Who are the children of Canaan! Tradition and history unite in the belief that they inhabit the continent of Africa. Their condition fulfills, with remarkable fidelity, the prophecy of that “righteous man and preacher of righteousness,” Noah. “A servant of servants,” was the double curse, which has rested upon that continent and race for many centuries. It is covered with a net-work of double slavery —every chief having his retinue of slaves, while he pays tribute to some higher chief or petty king. Yi u seem to lay much stress upon 'be fact that the Canaanites were not black. How do you know! Dr. Thompson, who has written, perhaps, the most thorough work c.: Syria and Palestine that has ever been published, says the ancient inhabitants of that country came from Africa. The great painting of Samyson grinding in the mill shows his Philistine drivers verr dark, if not black. But you miss the point of the Scriptural precedent and example for slavery. You prove, as you think that the Canaanites were not black, and then jump at once to the conclusion that if they were not black, they must have been enslaved because they were laboring men. This does very well to stir up prejudice at the North; biu is it the truth! The Israelites were permitted to enslave < he Canaanites, not because they were labor-

ing men, but because they were heathen, and thereby so degraded that a transfer to the Hebrew Commonwealth, where the true God was worshiped, was a privilege and a blessing. This furnishes the parallel point on which American slaveholders rely with great confidence. The Africans were taken from the . most degraded heathenism, and are here taught to worship the true God; and, in the opinion of every Bible man, more of them have been fitted for and gone to Heaven, from the thousands in America than from the millions in . frica. Dr. Dwight said, after long experience and wide observation, that he never knew but one lazy man converted. And as God had some chosen people in Africa, it was necessary that they should be taught to work in order to their conversion. But in the South they are nut allowed to read the Bible. Well, in Africa, they neither read it, hear of it nor from it. Faith cometh by hearing; and is it not better to hear j the truth than to live entirely destitute of it! You quote the eighth commandment as a I prohibition of slavery. This is singular. Were your ancestors thieves? They brought, ■ or assented to the bringing of slaves to this country. It is a singular fact, that while we boast of our Puritan ancestry, the laws of the present day would hang half the men that liv-"' _ hundred years ago, as engaged in the slave-traffic, directly or indirectly; and another law imprison all the ’■ ! n who lived forty years iince. 'rite eighth commandment was given on the way out of Egypt. It was the charter, the constitution of the Hebrew nation. All their other laws were controlled by the Dec ilogue. Well, ■ now wh’it! Whv, they had slaves by divine permission under this charter. How could they if the eighth commandment forbids it! But are the slaves stolen! < 'ert ain iy not by ; Americans. They buy them, pay lor them, I transfer them, and provide for them, in the only and most benevolent manner in which ■it can be done! As to the metaphysical abstraction, that man cannot have property in iT.n, ith-.s be. n contradicted ;.um the I'ou’idation of the world to the present time. Holding, use and transfer, are the elements of property; and this has been done by men to men in all ages; and yet. you say there is no word in the good old Hebrew tongue that conveys the idea of property in man. When a master inadvertently killed his slave, no ' blood was to be shed, for 'die was his money." Does that not mean property!

It cannotbo denied that the idea of slavery runs through all the Bible; it was stamped upon the entire history of the Jewish nation, and upon the history of every vigorous nation upon the face of the earth; indeed, I strongly suspect" this is the normal condition ; of large portions of a depraved race, ami I can readily believe that a man may sustain i the relation of slaveholder, in all good conscience, and with the entire Divine approbation. There are visible footprints cf God's disapprobation of the Abolitionism of this country. Look at th flocks of unclean beasts and birds that have come up out of its train. Infidels that curse God, abuse every man of good character, and then praise humanity in general to counterbalance their malignity and Out of the abstract rights of man have grown the more abstract rights of woman; and once respectable wives call St. I’. a crusty old bachelor, and Abraham ■ a tyrant because Surah obeyed him, and Paul makes mention of the fact. The second edition of the rights of women is divorce, “affinity,” and universal concubinage. We ! have far more of these immoral tendencies in the Northern States than they have at the South. Is it not time to look at home! The truth is, we have been wont to con- ■ template the condition of the slaves of the South from a wrong point of view. We compare them with races or nations more highly 1 civilized, and their condition seems a harsh and degraded one; but what were they when the Christian nations took them by the hand i and led them across the ocean! American ; slavery lias produced and -cultivated more African intellect, more social afleetion, more Christian emotion in two hundred years than all Afric (Ccuuui and Southern) for two ihuusand years. American slavery is a redemption, a delivarance from African heathenism. “The dark places oi the earth arc full of the habitations- of cruelty,” and no part of the earth is more dark or more filled with cruelty than Africa. Treading beneath their feet one of the most fertile soils, they cultivate almost nothing—l ; ve on fruits and nuts, with few cat le and little coinmerce. ' They are in the first place lazy beyond all hope of self-improvement. They will not ■ work. Now, God has ordained the law ot ! labor so surely, and so universally, that if barbarians will, not work, civilization will ! yoke them up and drive them into it. 'Phis is fixed, us sure as'light and gravity. Why

not! Why should one quarter of the globe, one section of the human! family, do nothing for the race! If Ham will not bring timber for the ark, Shem and Japhet pyill drive him to it. But /Africa is not only a great wilderness of loungers, but out of this idlenes grow all manner jf vices. Work is salvation. Work regenerates the earth and man. Work is progress, and without it nothing. The titledeed of the earth to man had this proviso: “That he should subdue it and multiply upon it.” Now if he only multiplies, and does not subdue, he has only a squatter sovereignty, no certified title till he builds his house and tills his farm. Hence, the Indian must be driven out —he will not work on any condition, neither self-moved nor driven by the hand of another, and, therefore, the last tomahawk of the red man will soon hang as a trophy in the halls of the conquerer. Now, the African works patiently and well when driven to it—he will work on no other condition. His climate is a terribl? protection from white invasion, therefore he must be transported and taught to work, thereby civilized, thereby Christianized, thereby improved every way, and perhaps by and by sent back to yoke up and subdue his whole continent, according to the pattern that has been shown him in this working bee-hive of America.

You touch in no very fraternal manner spine of the social vices of your brethren at ' iSsuth., Perhaps if they deserved the j stone, it should hardly come from a Northern | Land; the garments of our cities are drip- : ping with the waters of Sodom, and some of the Western St tes sunder the marriage covenant with as little consideration as the most ruthless slaveholder. Sensuality is not at this hour producing as much degradation nor destroy ing as many lives at the. South as iat the North; but this is not the point. What were the blacks socially when taken from I i Africa! The King of Dahomey has four | hundred wives, whom he employs in carry- i ing palm oil to..the coast, and thence new i i rum-and tobacco back to the palace to their ■ husband and king. This rum and tobacco 'are the joint production of slavery and freedom. Slavery produces the tobacco and molasses, and then we Yankees make the rutp ■ and send them both in our vessels to Africa ■ to buy oil gathered by women and carried on ' their beads in jars from fifty to two hundred 'miles. They are driven along by a herd ot lazy men,.and stepping carefully every minute under the express'condition that, if one pot of oil is spilled, one head of a woman and a wife must be cut oft' to atone for it. Now is it any great sin to catch a set of these lazy fellows, that live on the earnings ’of their wives, learn them to work, make ! tlu’m work, teach them-to love one another i and love their children, so that their highest ' ambition shall no longer b ■ to buy an extra ■ number of wives that they may have a few “pickaninnies” (children) to sell! A' wild j African, recently brought to Boston by a j merchant, begged for an old gun which he saw. When lasked what he wanted of it, he I replied: “to buy a wife and have a few ‘p* c " | kaninnies’ to sell.” Is it any harm to yoke up such mpn and work the laziness and the brutality out of them! Yes, butyou say there is a better way to do it. There may be, but it wants the evidence of a successful experiment. The Moravians once kindled their altars of devotion all around the Afri- : can coast, but the waves of barbarism have extinguished them.. Jamaica, in spite of devoted missionaries, British philanthrophy and American sympathy, is fast receding through idleness to barbarism. Half a million of people therj in twenty years have not lifted as many spades of earth as twenty Thousand Yankees in California in one-third lof the time. If this half million had the twenty thousand to lead them and guide them and plan for them, then that island, which was once a fruitful field, would not be going back to a wilderness. The best thing that could be done for Africa, if they could live there, would be to send a hundred thousand American slaveholders, to woi k them i up to some degree of civilization. It is charged that the life of the slave al ' the South is sometimes at the mercy ot the master. In Afr'ca the immedi. te body serv.nnts of every chief, at 1. ,: ‘ death, aiu at once beheaded and hurried forward to attend to the new wants of their old master. Is it wicked to buy these devoted victims ot heathenism and put. themhinder the protection of civilized, and often i < hristian masters. Just in proportion as the price of these slaves is raised in Africa, just to that degree ( 'is there motive to the heirs to re their ' lives. So far as Africa is concei .ed, the i slave-trade was and is humane in its operations; its abolition was the result of senti- ' tnent, and not the determination of-calm and i deliberate statesmanship. That it was not !

called for by the condition of the world, nor by any deep-seated moral sentiment, is proved from the fact that the nation foremost in its abrogation has now revived it on other shores and under another name, adding to whatever sin there is in the direct open slave-trade, the other sin of hypocracy and false pretense. Jamaica wants laborers, not because there are not plenty of them on the island, but because they will not work; and the same British philanthropy which stands guard over the stalwart and immensely lazy son of Ham, brings in the feebler children of Shem, and dooms them to the same bondage under another name. Honor to the sagacious and far-seeing statesmen of Georgia and South Carolina; for they breasted the united streams of British and American fanaticism, claimed and maintained their rights, and saved the South from barenness and desolation, the North from a civil war, and the negroes from barbarism. If more laborers are needed for Texas, Central America, parts of Mexico and Cuba, they ought to be brought, without objections, under such humane regulations as are made in other cases for the comfort of passengers. These laborers should coma from Africa, because they are stronger and make better slaves than any of the coppercolored races, because they are more susceptible of transformation, and their irnprove- | ment will be greater, and, lastly, because they are the most degraded.

As to the influence of slavery on the character of the whites, that is quite another question; but so far as the political history of our country is concerned, it is not easy to see how we could do without the slaveholders. See how their names shine along and adorn the past history of our country: Washington, JefFerson, the Randolphs, Bayard, Pinckney, Madison, Monroe, Crawford, Rutledge, Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, Benton—blot out these names, and a countless host of others, from the slave States, and what a blank ia left in our history. And do you not find men from these States now in Congress, iuiiy the peers of any that you can name from the North in Statesmanship, honor, integrity, patriotism, and high moral and religious character! Do you not see some bright and shining lights around you from the South! I have read no speeches that give me more entire satisfaction than those clear-headed, broad-minded, candid, fair, patriotic Stephens, of Georgia, or his associate, Jackson. In their speeches they seem to me models for smaller statesmen to look up to, and strive to equal.

A few words as to your motto at the head ;of your speech: “The fanaticism oC'the Democratic party.'’ If there could be found in the Democratic party or in its history, any of that element, certainly no one ought to be better qualified to deal with it than a gentleman from the Republican ranks. They j were born of it and nurtured by it; it is their i meat and drink, theirjnervine and their anodyne; their zeal in conflict and their consolation in defeat. The Democratic party needs no defense, a simple recital of its biography is its highest eulogy. When th® measure of British insult was full—when for twenty years they had insulted our flag, embarrassed and put under tribute our commerce; when they had seized our sailors and fired into our ships, and hung inocent men for being found on board an American vasI sei, then Henry Clay, Felix Grundy, and John C. Calhoun, and their associates, per- , formed a lustration; the Di mocracy of America vindicated the national honor, and established a new name and a new flag over the I ocean; and from that day to this all the progress and expansion at home and honor abroad have been won by the measures of the Democratic party.

This glory will remain in spite of all that enmity or mistaken zeal can do to mar or destroy it. You may possibly succeed (but i may Heaven prevent you) in the attempt you are making to trample under your feet the covenant of our fathers, apd exalt a sectional party with aims to places of power and , trust; but the day of your success would <be i the hour of your dissolution. Like the last I day of the Arctic summer, your sun would only rise to go down. Opposition is your cohesion—the only cement of your party. Your party can construct nothing; they lay down no principles; adhere to no name. Mr. Banks goes for the absorption of the, colored race, while Mr. Blair goes for their expulsion. Which shall be the policy of tbe.party’ The Democratic party has carried the ' country up from small beginnings to its presI ent prosperous and happy condition; and, only occasionally being taken out to be aired and I purified, is destined under that name, and with essentially its original and present principles, to govern this nation while we remain a republic. Equality among all the States; I each State to manage their own affairs—j slaveholders not to be taunted, nor insulted i for that tact—-equal lights to the new Territories, and nevv lands annexed and new States welcomed, as fast as they wish to come. These are the principles, mottoes and ban- | nets of success which wave around the Demiocratic party. Affectionately, your brother.

JOSEPH C. LOVEJOY.

To Hon. Owen Lovejoy, M. C. (gjf”A child died in Rochester, New York, last week, from swallowing a of the new c linage.