The Crisis! (Galveston, Tex.), Vol. 1, No. 6, Ed. 1 Monday, August 27, 1860 Page: 4 of 4
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in its important feature by gome, will be regarded as
binding in all else by the others ? Is the free trade
which the North sought in the formation of the Union
and for which the States generally agreed to give Con-
gress the power to regulate commerce, to be trampled
under foot by laws of obstruction, not giving to the
citizens of the South that free transit across the terri-
tory of the northern State* which we might claim
from any friendly State under Christendom; and is
Congress to stand powerless by, on the doctrine of
non-intervention? We have a right to claim abstin-
ence from interference with our rights from any gov-
ernment of the earth. Shall we claim no more from
that which we have constituted for our own purposes,
and which we maintain by draining our means for its
support ?
We have had agitation, changing in its form, and
fathering intensity, for the last forty years. It was
rst for political power, and directed against new
States : now it has assumed a social form, is all-per-
vading, and has reached the point of revolution and
civil war. For it was only last fall that an open act
of treason was committed by men who were sustained
by arms and money, raised by extensive combination
among the non-slaveholding States, to carry treason-
able war against the State of Virginia, because, as
before the Revolution, and ever since, she holds the
African in bondage. This is part of the history and
marks of the necessity of the times. It warns us to
stop and reflect, to go back to the original standard,
to measure our acts by the obligation of our fathers,
by the pledges they made one to another, to see whe-
ther we are conforming to our plighted faith, and to
ask seriously, solemnly—looking each other inquiring-
ly in the face—what shall we do to save our country ?
This agitation being at first one of sectional pride
for political power, has at least degenerated or grown
up to (as you please) a trade. There are men who
habitually set aside a portion of money which they
are annually to apply to what are called " charitable
purposes ;" that is to say, so far as I understand it,
to support some vagrant lecturer, whose purpose is
agitation and mischief wherever he goes. This con-
stitutes, therefore, a trade ; a class of people are thus
supported, employed for mischief, for incendiary pur-
poses, perhaps not always understood by those who
furnish the money ; but such is the effect; such is the
result of their action ; and in this state of the case I
call upon Senators to affirm the great principles on
which our institutions rest. In no spirit of crimina-
tion I have stated the reason why the proposition is
made. For these reasons I call upon them to restrain
the growth of evil passion, and to bring back the pub-
lic sense as far as in them lies, by earnest and united
effort, if it may be, to crown our country with peace,
and start it once more in its primal channel on a career
of progressive prosperity and constitutional justice.
The majority section have the power, why not use
it ? They cannot be struggling for additional power
in order to preserve their rights. If any of them
ever believed in what is called Southern aggression,
they know now they have the majority in the repre-
sentative districts and in the electoral college. They
cannot, therefore, fear an invasion of their rights.
They need no additional political power to protect
them from that. The argument, then, or the pretext
on which this agitation commenced, has passed away ;
and yet we are asked, if a party hostile to our institu-
tions shall gain possession of the Government, that we
shall stand quietly by and wait for an overt act. Overt
act! Is not a declaration of war an overt act ? What
would be thought of a country that, after a declara-
tion of war, and whilst the enemy's fleets were upon
the sea, should wait until a city had been sacked be-
fore it should say that war existed, or resistance should
be made ? The power of resistance consists, in 110
small degree, in meeting the evil at the outer gate. I
can speak for myself-—having no right to speak for
others—and do say that if I belonged to a party or-
ganized 011 the basis of making war on any section or
interest in the United States, if I know myself, I
would instantly quit it. We of the South have made
no war upon the North. We claim but to have the
Constitution fairly and equally administered. To
consent to less than this would be to sink to the state
of a tabooed case ; would be to degrade our posterity
so that they would curse this generation for robbing
them of the rights their Revolutionary fathers be-
queathed.
Is this expected? ¥et it is for the assertion of
such thoughts, such intents as these that we of the
South arc arraigned as threatening and attempting to
menace the North. I understand the art which in-
duce the use of that word " menace." No portion of
our people arc to be intimidated by threats. They
all have much of that sentiment which feels a pride
in the perilous hour ; and therefore it is that our de-
mand of equal rights, our assertion of the determina-
tion never to surrender them, has been tortured into a
menace to those with whom we have ever sought to live
in peace. It is not a threat, but a warning, a warning
given in a spirit of fraternity, when we say to those
who have a common destiny, a common interest with
us, " stop here, your tread is on an empire's dustit
is not to destroy, but to avoid the alternative, we
call you to the sober reckoning of the account before
you.* It would be idle to expect us to be satisfied with
declarations that the only purpose is to prevent slaves
being taken into the Territories. That, if it were all
designed, would be the cause of quarrel, because it is
offensive, unjust, and as I have endeavored to show, un-
constitutional. We have a recent example, however,
teaching a melancholy lesson of the madness and
faithlessness of abolitionism. When the British eman-
cipationists met at Old Jewry, they said their only
object was to break up the slave trade—the amis des
noirs, of France, at first proclaimed their purpose to
be the education of the mulattoes. The new schools
progressed with hastening steps to a commom goal.
The steady growth of their purpose ; the terrible ca-
tastrophes which ensued ; the wide spread ruin which
now broods ¿ver the most fertile portion of the West
Indies, proclaim how idle it is to rely on those who set
out with no fixed rule of conduct, their imagination
turned loose on the field of mere speculative philoso-
phy, and attempting on such a basis, to legislate for
public interest. This English teaching, this English
philanthropy, is to us what the wooden horse was at
the siege of Troy. It has its concealed mischief; it
is, I believe, the separation of these States ; the ruin
of the navigating and manufacturing States who are
their rivals ; not the Southern States who contribute
to their wealth and prosperity. Yet, strange as it
may seem, there only do the seeds they scatter take
root. British interference finds no footing, receives
no welcome among us of the South; we turn with
loathing and disgust, from their mock philanthropy
and transparent disguises in relation to the slave trade.
We look with sorrow upon the gallant sailors of the
United States who perish on the coast of Africa, par-
ticipating in a scheme which is to people the British
islands with Africans sent there from captured slavers.
While we are amiably employing our navy and appro-
priating money to send Jhe captured Africans back,
not to their home—they had none—but to a colony
founded by the United States, Great Britain transports
her captives to her colonial possessions, and there,
under the name of apprenticeship, compels them to
labor. More horrible still: while preaching a crusade
against the domestic institutions of the United States,
she is engaged in a trade for a race of men sufficiently
high in the scale of creation to value family ties and
to feel the sentiment of home—Coolies kidnapped ;
boys tolerably well educated, tradesmen, apothecaries,
caught up in China and brought to be sold for a term
of years, probably longer than they will live in field
labor as cultivators of colonial sugar estates. This
offence against nature has met with some solemn re-
tributions. The rising of these miserable captives
against the crews of the transports, attests the fraud
and cruelty of the traffic. The horrible barbarity
with which the trade is pursued, is to be seen in the
accounts of wrecks where the hatches are battened
down, the ship deserted by the crew, lofib beating on
the rocks, and these helpless prisoners, without the
light of Heaven, or the chance to struggle against
their fate, left there to hear the roar of the relentless
waves as they rush to complete the destruction begun
by equally relentless men. With such manifestations
as these, how can she assume to preach philanthropy
to us because we hold in bondage a race of men, to
whom slavery .is the normal state, who never were
free: who, for thousands of years, have occupied the
condition they did in the American colonies, and do
now in the Southern States, and who live in a quietude
and happiness which sjie might be well employed in
bestowing on the suffering peasantry of England, and
her colonial dependencies of the East.
Among the great purposes declared in the preamble
of the Constitution is oiie to provide for the generai
welfare, Provision, due and ample, for the general
welfare implies general, cordial fraternity. This Union
was not expected to be held together by coercion of
the States; the power of force as a mean was denied.
They sought, however, to bind it perpetually together
with that which was stijonger than triple bars of brass
and steel—the ceaseless current of kind offices, renew-
ing and renewed in aii eternal flow, and gathering
volume and velocity as it rolled. Its functions were
intended for the security of each, not for the injury of
"-any. It declared its pirpose to be the benefit of all.
' Concessions which were made between the different
States in the conventior prove the motive. Each gave
to the other what was necessary to it; what each
could afford to spare.
Young as a nation, olir triumphs under this system
have had no parallel in human history. We have
tamed a wilderness; Ve have spanned a continent.
We have built up a granary that secures the commer-
cial world against thi fear of famine- Higher than
all this, we have achieved a moral triumph. We have
received, by hundreds 3f thousands, a constant tide of
immigrants—energetic not well educated, fleeing,
some from want, some from oppression, some from the
penalties of violated liw—the men who disturbed the
quiet of Europe, we hive received into our society ;
and by the gentle suasion of a Government which ex-
hibits no force, by remaving want and giving employ-
ment, they have subáded into peaceful citizens, and
increased the wealth and power of our country.
If, then, this temple so blessed, to the roof of which
men look for a protection, co-extensive with the conti-
nent, a shelter and a model to infant republics that
need it—if this temple is tottering on its base, what,
I ask, can be a higher or nobler duty .for the Senate to
perform than to rush to its pillars and uphold them,
or to be crushed in the attempt. We have tampered
with a question which has grown in magnitude by
each year's delay. It requires to bo fairly met; the
truth to be plainly told.- The practical sound sense *
of the people, whenever the Federal Government from
its high places of authlirity shall proclaim the truth
in unequivocal language, will, in my firm belief, receive
and approve it. But so long as wc deal like the Del-
phic oracle in words of double meaning, so long as we
attempt to escape from responsibility, and exhibit our
fear to declare the truth by the fact that we do not
act upon it, wc must expect speculative theory to oc-
cupy the mind of the public, and error to increase as
time rolls on. But if the sad fate should be ours, for
this unwarranted agitation most minute, unworthy
cause of dissension, to see our Government destroyed,
the historian, who shall attempt philosophically to ex-
amine the question will, after he has put on liis micro-
scopic glasses and discovered it, be compelled to cry
out, " veritably so the unseen insect in the course of
time destroys the mighty oak." I hope there is yet
time by the* full, explicit declaration of truth, to disa-
buse the public mind, to arouse the popular heart, to
expose the danger from lurking treason and ill-con-
cealed hostility; to rally a virtuous people to their
country's rescue, who circling closer and deeper
around the ark of their Father's covenant, will bear
it to a place of security, there to remain, a sign of fra-
ternity, justice, aud equality to our remotest posterity.
The Irrepressible Conflict.
In alluding to the stoppage of a stranger, passing
through Anderson and Huntsville, whose appearance
was suspicious, and who was not allowed to go futher
hefore being examined, the Anderson Central Texian
has the following strong and pointed remarks :
The necessity which forces this mode of procedure
upon us towards strangers, is one which yields no
pleasure. The duty (for we esteem it a duty) is a
painful one ; but the preservation of our property", as
well as the lives of our woman and children, leaves
us no alternative. We are bound to act and to exer-
cise the most rigid scrutiny towards strangers, and
woe to the man who may be found moving in our midst
with the least suspicion attached to him.
If this condition of affairs can afford aught of plea-
sure to Mr. Greeley, and the Northern leaders acting
with him, we assure him that liis gratification should
be complete. Their teachings force our people to view
with suspicion all travelers reared north of Mason
and Dixon's line, and to examine them most critically-
Every feeling of fraternity is rapidly passing away,
and the most, hopeful Union men of yore begin to feel
that' the days of the Republic are numbered. The
jibes and jeers, the insults and aggressions of North-
ern abolitionists must cease. This condition of things
cannot last. There must be a restoration of good
feelings, or the government will be rent in twain.—
Already the rope and gibbet are doing their duty, and
the rifle, we fear, will soon be called upon to play its
part in the unnatural strife. The people of the North
must determine this momentous question. We can
only await their determination. If in the formation,
of their opinions, however, any should think that the
Southern people will tamely submit to degradation, we
feel it a duty, as a candid, honest man, as one who
would wish to live in peace and coniity with them al-
ways, to say to them that they are egregiously mis-
taken. Subjugation at the point of the bayonet will,
carry with it no dishonor, and this arbitrament will
surely come unless, forsooth, the Northern people
should resume their reason. 'Tis better, far better,
then, that we should yield, if yield we must, like men
who had done their whole duty, than like dastards
abandon the rights bequeathed to us by our sires with-
out striking a blow in their behalf.
We clip the following from the Atlanta, Ga.,.
American:
"In 1847 or 1848 John C. Breckinridge battled,
side by side with the notorious Cassius M. Clay, in
Kentucky, in favor of emancipation. He was then an
emancipationist."
The leading Opposition paper at Milledgevilie, Ga. r.
having made a similar charge, we find the following
recantation in its columns :
" Correction.—We stated in our issue two weeks
since, that Mr. Breckinridge was an emancipationist..
We find that we did him injustice ; it was his uncle,
R. J. Breckinridge, who was the man. John C. was
opposed to the measure."—Southern Recorder.
Keep it Before the People.—That John Bell, in
1837, voted with John Q. Adams and his anti-slavery asso-
ciates in the House, against a motion made to prevent an at-
tack on slavery in the States, by Slade, of Vermont.
That John Bell voted with the anti-slavery men in the
House, against the 21st rule rejecting abolition petitions.
That John Bell opposed the annexation of Texas, a slave
State.
That John Bell voted with the Freesoilers in the Senate
against the Utah bill, which rejected the Wilmot Proviso,,
and conceded the right of the people in the formation of a
State Constitution to adopt or reject slavery.
ir* "
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The Crisis! (Galveston, Tex.), Vol. 1, No. 6, Ed. 1 Monday, August 27, 1860, newspaper, August 27, 1860; Galveston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth181139/m1/4/: accessed June 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.