The Impending Crisis of the South

inclination, let him ignore all that we may write hereafter. We seek not to give currency to our peculiar opinio

wie-knives and pistols! Yes, without adding another word, Washington would be mobbed for what he has already said. Were Jefferson now employed as a professor in a Southern college, he would be dismissed and driven from the State, perhaps murdered before he reached the border. If Patrick Henry were a bookseller in Alabama, though it might be demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had never bought, sold, r

sperate faction of slaveholding criminals should succeed in their infamous endeavors to quench the spirit of liberty, which our forefathers infused into those two sacred charts of our political faith, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States. Oligarchal politicians are alone responsible for the continuance of African slavery in the South. For purposes of self-aggrandizement, they have kept learning and civilization from the people; they have wilfully misinterpreted the national compacts, and hav

t graphically and eloquently set forth, in the following extract from a speech recently

e hearts and hopes of mankind. Tyrants only cursed the workmen and their workmanship. Its architecture was new. It had no model in Grecian or Roman history. It seemed a paragon, let down from Heaven to inspire the hopes of men, and to demonstrate the favor of God to the people of a new world. The builde

eformity. They applied all the skill of their art; but they labored in vain. Self-interest was too strong for patriotism and love of liberty. The work stood still, and for a time it was doubtful whether the experiment would succeed. The blot must remain, o

erty were so dear to the people, that they would not long deny to others what they claimed for themselves. They never dreamed that slavery would be extended, but firmly believed it would be wholly blotted out. I challenge any man to show me a single patriot of the Revolution who was in

and they sacrificed for liberty. Slavery was then hateful. It was denounced by all. The British king was condemned for foisting it upon the Colo

he South, particularly of South Carolina, in their atrocious hostility to freedom, prolonged the arduous war of the Revolution from two to three years; and since the termination of that momentous st

f the most powerful, prosperous, virtuous, free, and peaceful nation, on which the sun has ever shone. Already has the time arrived for you to decide upon what basis you will erect your political superstructure. Upon whom will you depend for an equitable and judicious form of constitutional government? Whom will you desig

ey, we now proceed to make known the anti-slavery sentiments of those noble abolitionists, the Fathers of the Republi

e of him who was "first in war, first in peace

E OF WAS

er, dated September 9th, 17

to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see

ris, dated Mount Vernon,

for the abolition of it. But there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplishe

, in a

de Lafayette-A

ry from the state of bondage in which they are held, is a striking evidence of the benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy

tter to Lafay

but your late purchase of an estate in the Colony of Cayenne, with the view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and no

r John Sinclair,

, which neither Virginia nor Maryland have at present, but which not

d testament we make t

ished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermixture by marriage with the dower negroes, as to excite the most painful sensation, if not disagreeable co

ction of this provision was her right of dower, she at once gave it up, and the slaves were made free." A man might possibly concent

w turn to the author of the Declarati

CE OF J

ges of his Notes on Vir

a loose rein to the worst of passions; and, thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the Statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part and the amor patriae of the other; for if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another; in which he must look up the faculties of his nature, contribute, as far as depends on his individual endeavors, to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding fro

neral Congress, which was to assemble, and did assemble, in Philadelphia, in September of the same year. Be

ssary to exclude further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Maj

ence, of which it is well known he was the author, w

slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Brita

further;

with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure

1785, in a letter to Dr.

aryland. In Maryland I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression; a conflict wherein th

friend in 1814, he made use of t

ubject of the slavery of negroes have long since been in the possession of the public, and time has only served to give them stronger root. The love of

, he

f his own liberty; and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on

n of as "goods and chattels," "property," "human cattle." In our first quotation from Jefferson's works, we

thren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall have involved Heaven itself in darkness, doubtless a God

same subject, dated May 20, 1826, onl

forty times, they would have only become the more stale and threadbare. Al

Independence, we now turn to the Fathe

CE OF M

ion of the slave-trad

re it of us. It is to be hoped, that by expressing a national disapprobation of the trade, we may destroy it, and sav

, he

e Constitution the idea that

of "The Federa

her form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America, and with the fundamental principles of the Revolution, or with that hono

al Conventio

avery exists, the Republican theo

occasion,

he most enlightened period of time, a ground of the mo

ICE OF

Virginia Convention

e very vitals of the Union, and has been prejudi

ICE OF

nry says, in a letter d

when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with precision, in a country above all others fond of liberty-that in such an age and in such a country, we find men professing a religion the most mild, humane, gentle, and generous, adopting such a principle, as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to liberty? Every thinking, honest man rejects it in speculation. How free in practice from conscientious motives! Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my

s great or

We ought to lament and deplore the necessity of holding our fellow-men in bondage.

CE OF R

olph, of Roanoke, in a letter to

, be him whom he may, I am your friend, in the literal sense of that much abused word. I say much abused, because it is applie

Congress,

head of that man from the North who ris

is negroes. The following lines from his w

the deepest regret to me that the circumstances under which I inherited them, and the obstacles thrown in the way by the laws of

M. RA

ginia Legislature, in 18

less bountiful. It is painful to consider what might have been, un

EFFERSON

he Legislature of Virginia, used the foll

threatens. No, Sir; it is to fall upon the less wealthy class of our citizens, chiefly upon the non-slaveholder. I have known patrols turned out when there was not a slaveholder among them; and this is the practice of the country. I have slept in times of alarm quiet in bed, without having a thought of care, while these individuals, owning none of this property themselves, were patrolling under a compulsory process, for a pit

ominion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand menagerie, where men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for the shambles? Is it better, is it not worse, than the slave trade-that trade which enlisted the labor of the good and wise of every creed, and every clime, to abolish it? The trader receives the slave, a stranger in language, aspect, and manners, from the merchant who

ame principle, he could justify Mahometanism, with its plurality of wives, petty wars for plunder, robbery, and murder, or any other

N RAN

ion in Philadelphia, Peyton Randolph, President, the fol

which time we will wholly discontinue the slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, n

D RAN

United States contains t

er, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or

sion requires the rendition of fugitive slaves, we respectfully commend the

animously inserted-the former being thought to express the condition of slaves, a

for the

ICE OF

American heart always throbs with emotions of grateful remembrance, s

slave-labor be generally employed, if the proprietor were not tempted to raise

te, in 1850, he used the

re existed, either South or North of that line. Coming as I do from a slave State, it is my solemn, deliberate and well-matured determination that no power, no earthly power, shall compel me to vote for the positive introduction of slavery either South or North of that line. Sir, while you reproach, and justly too, our British ancestors for the introduction of this institution upon the continent of America I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity of the present inhabitants of California and of New Mexico, shall reproach us for doing just what

further;

never, never, never, by word, or thought, by mind or will, aid in admitt

memory of noble

US M.

pretty generally admitted that the best one was made by Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, at the Tabernacle, in New-York City, on the 24t

on! Again they resolve and reresolve, and yet there is not a single ton more shipped and not a single article added to the wealth of the South. But, gentlemen, they never invite such men as I am to attend their Conventions. They know that I would tell them that slavery is the cause of their poverty, and that I will tell them that what they are aiming at is the dissolution of the Union-that they may be pre

red brick buildings, are all white men, and they are in the full enjoyment of health. But how about cotton? I am informed by a friend of mine-himself a slaveholder, and therefore good authority-that in Northwestern Texas, among the German settlements, who, true to their national instincts, will no

ICE OF

ars' View," Thoma

eclaration, and a sort of general conscience delivery, I will say that my opposition to it dates from 1804, when I was a student at law in the S

d in St. Louis, on the 3rd

rried into this Territory, where it never was. Then Mr. Clay, rising, loomed colossally in the Senate of the United States, as he rose declaring that for no earthly purpose, no earthly object, could he carry slavery into places where it did not exist before. It was a great and proud day for Mr. Clay, towards the latter days of his life, and if an artist could have been there to catch his expression as he

ICE OF

that formed the Constitution, from Virginia, when the provision for

er of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities. He lamented that some of our Eastern brethren ha

CE OF M

used this language in t

ings, the springs of his thought-you may close upon his mind every avenue of knowledge, and cloud it over with artificial night-you may yoke him to your labors, as the ox, which liveth only to work and worketh only to live-you may put him under any process which, without destroying his value as a slave, will debase and cru

CE OF I

ention, Mr. Iredell, afterwards a Judge o

it will be an event which must be pleasing to eve

CE OF P

e, in 1789, made several powerful arguments in favor of the abolitio

bject, and her citizens by their practice, countenanced. Founded in a disgraceful traffic, to which the parent country lent its fostering aid, from motives of intere

age, or that they who have been habituated to lord it over others, will not, in time, become base enough to let

ICE OF

of Virginia, in 183

years after, the abolition of slavery was a favorite topic with many of our ablest Statesmen, who ent

CE OF M

uier, said, in the Virgi

nts, roots out an industrious population, banishes the yeomanry of the country-deprives th

CE OF B

ham, a member of the Legislat

is oppressed and degraded race cannot be held as they now are-when a change will

ose all action upon this subject, and, instead of aiding in devising some feasible plan for freeing their country from a

CE OF C

r of the Virginia Legislature,

reasing one. That it has been destructive to the lives of our citizens, history, with uner

CE OF S

ember of the Legislature o

essary to attempt it. They glare upon us at every step. When

CE OF P

of Virginia, in 183

remarked that we had invoked for ourselves the benefit of a principle which we had den

CE OF F

one of the noblest son

ith in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. I am opposed to slavery in the abstract, and upon principles sustained and made

y be beneficially exerted to advance their interests, and secure their independence, knowing this, their suffrages will not be wanting to maintain that authority in the Union, which is absolutely ess

ICE OF

licans of Maryland, in 185

soil, to a great extent, in the hands of the slaveholders, and the entire control of all departments of the State Government; and yet a majority of people in the slave States are not slav

ICE OF

warded so much well-merited prai

f the man with the wolf by the ears; too dangerous to hold on any longer, and equally dangerous to let go. To our mind, the event is as certain to happen as any event which depends on the contingencies of the future, viz.: that unless means be devised for gradually relieving the slave States from the undue pres

ICE OF

sts first became a National Party, and for whom they vo

ts injustice as an element can be a harmonious one or a permanent one. Harmony is the antagonist of injustice, ever has been, and ever will be; that is, so long as injustice lasts, which cannot always be, for it is a lie, a semblance, therefore, perishabl

onger than in the more northern ones, are to be placed on the list of decaying communities. To a philosophic observer, they seem to be falling back on the s

CE OF D

s 1785. With Maryland and Missouri, it may now be ranked as a semi-slav

fessions of my love of liberty and abhorrence of slavery, not, ho

CE OF M

at their noble State shall be freed from the sin and the shame, the crime and the curse of slavery; and in accordance with this determination, long since formed, they are giving every possible encouragement to free white labor, thereby, very properly, rendering the labor of slaves both unprofitable and disgraceful. The formation of an Abolition Society in this State, in 1789, was the result of the influence of the masterly speeches delivered in the House of Delegates, by the Hon. William Pinkney whose undyi

to destroy those principles on which it is supported, as it lessens the sens

CE OF V

tanding all her more modern manners and inhumanity, has been so prolific of just views and noble sentiments, that we deem it eminently fit and proper to blazon many of them to the world as the redeeming features of her history. An Abolition Society was formed in this State in 1791. In a memorial which the members of t

by nature, equally

ed for the common benefit, protection, and s

ve as representatives of the peo

ht of suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property, for public uses, without their own consent or that of

greatest bulwarks of Liberty, and can neve

people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, fruga

tion of Slavery," organized in 1791

rights of human nature, and utterly repugnant to the precepts of the gospel, which breathes 'peace on earth and good will to men,' lament that a practice so inconsistent with tr

OF NORTH

re more moderate, decent, sensible, and honorable, than the slaveholders in either of the adjoining States, or the States further South; and we know that many of them are heartily ashamed of the vile occupations of slaveholding and slave-breeding in which they are engaged, for we have the assurance from their own lips. As a mat

by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the authorship of which is generally attributed to Ephraim Brevard, was proclaimed in Charlotte, Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, and fully ratified in a second Convention of the people of said county, held on the 31st of the same month. And here, by the way, we may remark, that it is supposed Mr. Jefferson made use of this last-mentioned document as the basis of his draft of the indestructible title-deed of our liberties. There is certainly an identicalness of language between the two papers that is well calculated to strengthen this hypothesis. This, however, is a controversy about which we are but little concerned. For

st worthy citizens from other States in the Union, and thus lay a broad foundation of permanent political power and prosperity. Intelligent white farmers from the Middle and New England States will flock to our more congenial clime, eager to give thirty dollars per acre for the same lands that are now a drug in

outh Carolina, including, perhaps, the greater part of Georgia. An exclusive lease of liberty for ten years would unquestionably make us the Empire State of the South. But we have no disposition to debar others from the enjoyment of liberty or any other inalienable right; we ask no special favors; what we demand for ourselves

of man," and "declare ourselves a free and independent people, are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-gover

ECLARATION OF

rolina, May 20th, 1775, and ratified by the Coun

countenanced the unchartered and dangerous invasion of our rights as claimed by Great Britain

untry, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract or associatio

verning association, under the control of no power other than that of our God, and the general government of the Congress; to the mainte

this county, we do hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each, and every of our former laws-wherein, neverth

at the virtues of a noble ancestry are gratefully remembered by an emulous and appreciative posterity. Yet, even as things are, we are not without genuine consolation. The star of hope and promise is beginning to beam brightly over the long-obscured horizon of the South;

g page, and to which we request the reader to recur, might h

August, 1774, in which there were sixty-nine delegates,

any slave or slaves imported or brought into the Province by others

s, revised by Martin

t all was passed, prior to the revol

on or murder can be legalized, has been virtually admitted by some of the most profound Southern jurists themselves; and we

tive Slave Bill, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, objected to Mr. Dayton

avery is established in the State from which the fugitive has absconded. Now this very thing, in a recent case in the city of New-York, was required by one of the judges of that State, which case attracted the attention of the authorities of Maryland, and against which they protested. In that case the State judge went so far as to say that the only mode of proving it was by reference to

, of Mississ

h impunity, or if he could be murdered in cold blood, without subjecting the offender to the highest penalty known to the criminal jurisprudence of the country. Has the slave no rights, because he is deprived of his freedom? He is still a h

uffin, of North

, moral and intellectual instruction seem the natural means, and, for the most part, they are found to suffice. Moderate force is superadded only to make the others effectual. If that fail, it is better to leave the party to his own headstrong passions, and the ultimate correction of the law, than to allow it to be immoderately inflicted by a private person. With slavery it is far otherwise. The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety; the subject, one doomed, in his own person and his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits. What moral considerations shall be addressed to such a being to convince him, what it

c, was an avowed abolitionist, and that he published an address to the people of North Carolina, delineating, in a masterly manner, the material, moral, and social disadvantages of slavery. Where is that address? Has it been suppressed by the oligarchy? The fact that

OF SOUTH

dgment; the dictates of reason and philosophy have no influence upon her actions. Like the wife who is pitiably infatuated with

ressed his opinion of this St

for any just thinking man, to witness her senseless and quenchless malignancy against the Union without the most immeasurable dis

were assessed

CARO

Land 17

at $22,

alue per

e time the

JE

f Land,

at $153

alue per

rom the loathsome sink of iniquity into which slavery has plunged her, and to make her one of the most brilliant stars in the great constellation of States. While their minds are occupied with other considerations, let them not forget the difference between twenty-eight dollars and seventy-six cents, the value of land per acre in New Jersey, which is a second-rate free State, and one dollar and thirty-two cents, the value of land per acre in South Carolina, which is, par excellence, the model slave State. The difference between the two sums is twenty-seven dollars and forty-four cents, which would

ways continue to be, on the wrong side. From Ramsay

ent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within the Kingdom of Great Britain; that it is their fundamental right, tha

ume of Philodemus, in a political pamphlet pu

uman mind, that it almost wholly effaces from it

of the particular interes

sources of the mischiefs that have befallen them, and to endeavor to escape the rocks which they have all unfortunately split upon. It is paying ourselves but a poor compliment, to say that we are incapable of profiting by others, and that, with all the information which is to be derived from their fatal experience,

and well-written article from the pen of Wm. Henry Hurlbut,

The slaveholder, investing his capital in the purchase of the laborers themselves, and not merely in soil and machines, paying his free laborers out of the profit, must depend for his continued and progressive prosperity upon the cheapness and facili

na Institute, in Charleston, Nov. 20th, 1856, M

insure either individual or national prosperity. No people can be highly prosperous without them. No people ever have been. Agriculture, alone, will not make or sustain a great people. The true policy of every people is to cultivate the earth, manufacture its products, and send them abroad, in exchange for those comforts and luxuries, and necessaries, which their own country and their own industry cannot give or make. The dependence of South Carolina on Europe and the Northern States for all the necessaries, comforts and luxuries, which the mechanic arts af

CE OF G

oligarchy. At best, however, even in the most liberal slave States, the social position of the non-slaveholding whites is but one short step in advance of that of the negroes; and as there is, on the part of the oligarchy, a constantly increasing desire and effort to usurp greater power, the more we investigate the subject the more fully a

settled, in 1733, was bitterly opposed to the institution of slave

trouble, but at last got the then government to favor them. We would not suffer slavery, (which is against the Gospel, as well as the fundamental law of England,) to be authorized under our authority; we refused, as truste

erican Congress, among other resolutions, "the Representatives of the exte

state of our country or other specious arguments may plead for it,) a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties, (as well as lives,) debasing part of our fellow creatures below men, and corrupting the virtue and morals of the rest; and is laying the basis of that libe

ate, in a speech delivered in

d, which obscures half the lustre of our free institutions. For my own par

touch of s

slaves who cr

o those lines, he mig

ave a slave to

to fan me w

en I wake, for

ght and sold ha

ed with other arguments. In the foregoing excerpts is revealed to us, in language too plain to be misunderstood, the important fact that every truly great and good man the South has ever produced, has, with hopeful confidence, looked forward to the time when this entire continent shall be redeemed from the crime and the curse o

organization of the General Government, we could introduce, from several of their wisest and best citizens, anti-slavery sentiments equally as strong and convincing as those that emanated from the great founders of our movement-Wash

octrines of the South, we have been careful to make such quotations as triumpha

at the Know-Nothing brig was to carry the Madison chart. Imposed upon by these monstrous falsehoods, we have, from time to time, been induced to engage passage on each of these corrupt and rickety old hulks; but, in every instance, we have been basely swamped in the sea of slavery, and are alone indebted for our lives to th

the statism advocated by the great political prototypes above-mentioned, but no longer. We believe it is, as it ought to be, the desire, the determination, and the destiny of this party, to give the death-blow to slavery; should future developments prove the party at variance with this belief-a