IV. FEELINGS OF THE SLAVEHOLDERS TOWARDS
THE LABORING CLASSES.

Whenever the great mass of the laboring population of a country are reduced to beasts of burden, and toil under the lash, "bodily labor," as Chancellor Harper expresses it, must be disreputable, from the mere influence of association. Hence you know white laborers at the South are styled "mean whites." At the North, on the contrary, labor is regarded as the proper and commendable means of acquiring wealth; and our most influential men would in no degree suffer in public estimation, for holding the plough, or even repairing the highways. Hence no poor man is deterred from seeking a livelihood by honest labor from a dread of personal degradation. The different light in which labor is viewed at the North and the South is one cause of the depression of industry in the latter.

Another cause is the ever-wakeful jealousy of your aristocracy. They fear the people; they are alarmed at the very idea of power and influence being possessed by any portion of the community not directly interested in slave property. Visions of emancipation, of agrarianism, and of popular resistance to their authority, are ever floating in their distempered and excited imaginations. They know their own weakness, and are afraid you should know it also. Hence it is their policy to keep down the "mean whites." Hence their philippics against the lower classes. Hence their constant comparison of the laborers of the North, with their own slaves; and hence, in no small degree, the absence among you of those institutions which confer upon the poor that knowledge which is power. Do you deem these assertions uncharitable? Listen to their own declarations:

"We believe the servitude which prevails in the South far preferable to that of the North, or in Europe. Slavery will exist in all communities. There is a class which may be nominally free, but they will be virtually Slaves."—Mississippian, July 6th, 1838.

"Those who depend on their daily labor for their daily subsistence can never enter into political affairs: they never do, never will, never can."—B. W. Leigh in Virginia Convention, 1829.

"All society settles down into a classification of capitalists and laborers. The former will own the latter, either collectively through the government, or individually in a state of domestic servitude, as exists in the Southern States of this confederacy. If laborers ever obtain the political power of a country, it is in fact in a state of revolution. The capitalists north of Mason and Dixon's line, have precisely the same interest in the labor of the country, that the capitalists of England have in their labor. Hence it is that they must have a strong federal government (!) to control the labor of the nation. But it is precisely the reverse with us. We have already not only a right to the proceeds of our laborers, but we own a class of laborers themselves. But let me say to gentlemen who represent the great class of capitalists in the North—beware that you do not drive us into a separate system; for if you do, as certain as the decrees of heaven, you will be compelled to appeal to the sword to maintain yourselves at home. It may not come in your day; but your children's children will be covered with the blood of domestic factions, and will see a plundering mob contending for power and conquest."—Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, in Congress, 21st Jan., 1836.

So the way to prevent plundering mobs, is to enslave the poor! We shall see presently, how far this expedient has been successful in preventing murdering mobs.

"In the very nature of things there must be classes of persons to discharge all the different offices of society, from the highest to the lowest. Some of these offices are regarded as degrading, although they must and will be performed. Hence those manifest forms of dependent servitude which produce a sense of superiority in the masters or employers, and of inferiority on the part of the servants. Where these offices are performed by members of the political community, a dangerous element is obviously introduced into the body politic. Hence the alarming tendency to violate the rights of property by agrarian legislation, which is beginning to be manifest in the older States, where universal suffrage prevails without domestic slavery.

"In a word, the institution of domestic slavery supersedes the necessity of an order of nobility, and all the other appendages of a hereditary system of government."—Governor M'Duffie's Message to the South Carolina Legislature, 1836.

"We regard slavery as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world. It is impossible with us, that the conflict can take place between labor and capital, which makes it so difficult to establish and maintain free institutions in all wealthy and highly civilized nations where such institutions do not exist. Every plantation is a little community with the master at its head, who concentrates in himself the united interests of capital and labor, of which he is the common representative."—(Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina, in the U. S. Senate, Jan. 10th, 1840.)

"We of the South have cause now, and shall soon have greater, to congratulate ourselves on the existence of a population among us, which excludes the Populace which in effect rules some of our Northern neighbors, and is rapidly gaining strength wherever slavery does not exist—a populace made up of the dregs of Europe, and the most worthless portion of the native population."—(Richmond Whig, 1837.)

"Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a cultivated understanding, a fine feeling? So far as the mere laborer has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspiration of a freeman, he is unfitted for his situation. If there are sordid, servile, laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, laborious beings to perform them?

"Odium has been cast upon our legislation, on account of its forbidding the elements of education being communicated to slaves. But in truth what injury is done them by this? He who works during the day with his hands, does not read in the intervals of leisure for his amusement, or the improvement of his mind, or the exception is so very rare as scarcely to need the being provided for."—(Chancellor Harper of South Carolina.—Southern Literary Messenger.)

This same gentleman delivered an oration on the 4th of July, 1840, reviewing the principles of the two great political parties, and although he supported Mr. Van Buren's administration, in consideration of its devotion to the slave interest, he frankly inquires:—

"Is there anything in the principles and opinions of the great democratic rabble, as it has been justly called, which should induce us to identify ourselves with that? Here you may find every possible grade and hue of opinion which has ever existed in the country. Here you may find loafer, and loco foco, and agrarian, and all the rabble of the city of New York, the most corrupt and depraved of rabbles, and which controls, in a great degree, the city itself, and through that, as being the commercial metropolis, exercises much influence over the State at large.

"What are the essential principles of democracy as distinguished from republicanism? The first consists in the dogma, so portentous to us, of the natural equality and unalienable right to liberty of every human being. Our allies (!) no doubt, are willing at present to modify the doctrine in our favor. But the spirit of democracy at large makes no such exceptions, nor will these (our allies, the Northern democrats) continue to make it, longer than necessity or interest may require. The second consists in the doctrine of the divine right of majorities; a doctrine not less false, and slavish, and absurd, than the ancient doctrine of the divine right of kings."

Mr. Robert Wickliffe, of Kentucky, in a speech published in the Louisville Advertiser, in opposition to those who were adverse to the importation of slaves from the States, thus discourseth:

"Gentlemen wanted to drive out the black population, that they may obtain white negroes in their place. White negroes have this advantage over black negroes, they can be converted into voters; and the men who live upon the sweat of their brow, and pay them but a dependent and scanty subsistence, can, if able to keep ten thousand of them in employment, come up to the polls and change the destiny of the country.

"How improved will be our condition when we have such white negroes as perform the servile labors of Europe, of Old England, and he would add now of New England; when our body servants and our cart drivers and our street sweepers are white negroes instead of black. Where will be the independence, the proud spirit, and the chivalry of Kentuckians then?"

Had the gentleman looked across the river, he might have found an answer to his question, in the wealth, power, intelligence and happiness of Ohio.

In reading the foregoing extracts, it is amusing to observe how adroitly the slaveholders avoid all recognition of any other classes among them than masters and slaves. Who would suspect from their language, that they were themselves a small minority of the white inhabitants, and that their own "white negroes" could, if united and so disposed, outvote them at the polls? It is worthy of remark that in their denunciations of the populace, the rabble, those who work with their hands, they refer not to complexion, but to condition; not to slaves, but to the poor and laborious of their own color. It is these haughty aristocrats who find in Northern democrats "allies," who in Congress and out of it are zealous in obeying their mandates, and who may justly be termed their "white negroes."

Slavery, although considered by Mr. Calhoun "the most stable basis of free institutions in the world," has, as we shall presently show you, in fact, led to grosser outrages in the social compact, to more alarming violations of constitutional liberty, to more bold and reckless assaults upon "free institutions," than have ever been even attempted by the much-dreaded agrarianism of the North.

V. STATE OF RELIGION.

The deplorable ignorance and want of industry at the South, together with the disrepute in which honest industry is held, cannot but exercise, in connection with other causes, a most unhappy influence on the morals of the inhabitants. You have among you between two and three millions of slaves, who are kept by law in brutal ignorance, and who, with few exceptions, are virtually heathens. [8]

You have also among you more than 200,000 free negroes, thus described by Mr. Clay:—"Contaminated themselves, they extend their vices to all around them." [9]

If evil communications corrupt good manners, the intimate intercourse of the whites with these people must be depraving: nor can the exercise of despotic power by the masters, their wives and children be otherwise than unfavorable to the benevolent affections.

It is with pain we are compelled to add, that the conduct and avowed sentiments of the Southern clergy in relation to Slavery, necessarily exert an unhappy influence. Most of the clergy are themselves slaveholders, and are thus personally interested in the system, and are consequently bold and active in justifying it from Scripture, representing it as an institution enjoying the divine sanction. An English author, in reference to these efforts of your clergy, forcibly remarks: "Whatever may have been the unutterable wickedness of slavery in the West Indies, there it never was baptized in the Redeemer's hallowed name, and its corruptions were not concealed in the garb of religion. That acmé of piratical turpitude was reserved for the professed disciples of Jesus in America." And well has John Quincy Adams said, "The spirit of slavery has acquired not only an overruling ascendency, but it has become at once intolerant, proscriptive, and sophistical. It has crept into the philosophical chairs of the schools. Its cloven hoof has ascended the pulpits of the churches—professors of colleges teach it as a lesson of morals—ministers of the Gospel seek and profess to find sanctions for it in the Word of God."

Your ministers live in the midst of slavery, and they know that the system on which they bestow their benedictions, is, in the language of Wilberforce, "a system of the grossest injustice, of the most heathenish irreligion and immorality; of the most unprecedented degradation and unrelenting cruelty." Surely, we have reason to fear that the denunciation of Scripture against false prophets of old, will be accomplished against the Southern clergy, "Because they ministered unto them before their idols, and caused the House of Israel to fall into iniquity, therefore have I lifted up mine hand against them, saith the Lord God, and they shall bear their iniquity."—Ezek. 44: 12.

Under such ministrations it cannot be expected that Christian zeal and benevolence will take deep root and bear very abundant fruit. This is a subject on which few statistics can be obtained. We have no means of ascertaining the number of churches and ministers throughout the United States of the various denominations. Some opinion, however, may be formed of the religious character of a people, by their efforts for the moral improvement of the community. In the United States there are numerous voluntary associations for religious and benevolent purposes, receiving large contributions and exercising a wide moral influence. Now, of all the large benevolent societies professing to promote the welfare of the whole country, and asking and receiving contributions from all parts of it, we recollect but one that had its origin in the slave region, and the business of which is transacted in it, and that is the American Colonization Society. Of the real object and practical tendency of this Society it is unnecessary to speak—you understand them.

In the 10th Report of the American Sunday School Union [p. 50] is a table showing the number of Sunday School scholars in each State for the year 1834. From this table we learn that

about twice as many as in the thirteen slave States!

And is it possible that the literary and religious destitution you are suffering, together with the vicious habits of your colored population, should have no effect on the moral character of the whites?

We entreat your patient and dispassionate attention to the remarks and facts we are about to submit to you on the next subject of inquiry.

VI. STATE OF MORALS.

Christianity, by controlling the malignant passions of our nature, and exciting its benevolent affections, gives a sacredness to the rights of others, and especially does it guard human life. But where her blessed influence is withdrawn, or greatly impaired, the passions resume their sway, and violence and cruelty become the characteristics of every community in which the civil authority is too feeble to afford protection.

No society is free from vices and crime, and we well know that human depravity springs from another source than slavery. It will not, however, be denied that circumstances and institutions may check those evil propensities to which we are all prone; and it will, we presume, be admitted that in forming an opinion of the moral condition and advancement of any community, we are to be guided in our judgment, not by insulated facts, but by the tone of public opinion. Atrocities occur in the best regulated and most virtuous States, but in such they excite indignation and are visited with punishment; while in vicious communities they are treated with levity and impunity.

In a country where suffrage is universal, the representatives will but reflect the general character of their constituents. If we are permitted to apply this rule in testing the moral condition of the South, the result will not be favorable.

In noticing the public conduct of public men, we are not sensible of violating any principle of courtesy or delicacy; we touch not their private character or their private acts; we refer to their language and sentiments, merely as one indication of the standard of morals among their constituents, not as conclusive proof apart from other evidence.

On the l5th February, 1837, R. M. Whitney was arraigned before the House of Representatives for contempt in refusing to attend when required before a Committee. His apology was that he was afraid of his life, and he called, as a witness in his behalf, one of the Committee, Mr. Fairfield, since Governor of the State of Maine. It appeared that in the Committee, Mr. Peyton of Virginia had put some interrogatory to Whitney, who had returned a written answer which was deemed offensive. On this, as Mr. Fairfield testified, Peyton addressed the Chairman in these terms, "Mr. Chairman, I wish you to inform this witness, that he is not to insult me in his answers: if he does, God damn him! I will take his life on the spot!" Whitney rose and said he claimed the protection of the Committee, on which Peyton exclaimed, "God damn you, you shan't speak, you shan't say one word while you are in this room, if you do I will put you to death!" Soon after, Peyton observing that Whitney was looking at him, cried out, "Damn him, his eyes are on me—God damn him, he is looking at me—he shan't do it—damn him, he shan't look at me!"

The newspaper reports of the proceedings of Congress, a few years since, informed us that Mr. Dawson, a member from Louisiana, went up to Mr. Arnold, another member, and said to him, "If you attempt to speak, or rise from your seat, sir, by God I'll cut your throat!"

In a debate on the Florida war, Mr. Cooper having taken offence at Mr. Giddings of Ohio, for some remarks relative to slavery, said in his reply, "If the gentleman from Ohio will come among my constituents and promulgate his doctrines there, he will find that Lynch law will be inflicted, and that the gentleman will reach an elevation which he little dreams of."

In the session of 1841, Mr. Payne, of Alabama, in debate, alluding to the abolitionists, among whom he insisted the Postmaster-General ought to be included, declared that he would proscribe all abolitionists, he "would put the brand of Cain upon them—yes, the mark of Hell, and if they came to the South he would hang them like dogs!"

Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, at an earlier period thus expressed himself in the House: "I warn the abolitionists, ignorant, infatuated barbarians as they are, that if chance shall throw any of them into our hands, they may expect a felon's death!"

In 1848, Mr. Hale, a Senator from New Hampshire, introduced a bill for the protection of property in the District of Columbia, attempts having been made to destroy an anti-Slavery press. Mr. Foote, a Senator from Mississippi, thus expressed himself in reply: "I invite him (Mr. H.) to the State of Mississippi, and will tell him before-hand, in all honesty, that he could not go ten miles into the interior, before he would grace one of the tallest trees of the forest, with a rope around his neck, with the approbation of every virtuous and patriotic citizen, and that, if necessary, I should myself assist in the operation."

And now, fellow-citizens, do these men, with all their profanity and vulgarity, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, represent the feelings, and manners, and morals of the slaveholding community? We have seen no evidence that they have lost a particle of popular favor in consequence of their ferocious violence. Alas! their language has been re-echoed again and again by public meetings in the slave States; and we proceed to lay before you overwhelming proof that in the expression of their murderous feelings towards the abolitionists, they have faithfully represented the sentiments of their constituents.

VII. DISREGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE.

We have already seen that one of the blessings which the slaveholders attribute to their favorite institution, is exemption from popular tumults, and from encroachments by the democracy upon the rights of property. Their argument is, that political power in the hands of the poor and laboring classes is always attended with danger, and that this danger is averted when these classes are kept in bondage. With these gentlemen, life and liberty seem to be accounted as the small dust of the balance, when weighed against slavery and plantations; hence, to preserve the latter they are ever ready to sacrifice the former, in utter defiance of laws and constitutions.

We have already noticed the murderous proposition in relation to abolitionists, made by Governor M'Duffie to the South Carolina Legislature in 1835: "It is my deliberate opinion that the laws of every community should punish this species of interference, by death without benefit of clergy." In an address to a legislative assembly, Governor M'Duffie refrained from the indecency of recommending illegal murder; but we will soon find that the public sentiment of the South by no means requires that abolitionists shall be put to death with legal formalities; but on the contrary, the slaveholders are ready, in the language of Mr. Payne, to "hang them like dogs."

We hazard little in the assertion, that in no civilized Christian community on earth is human life less protected by law, or more frequently taken with impunity, than in the slave States of the Federal Union. We wish to impress upon you the danger and corruption to which you and your children are exposed from the institution, which, as we have shown you, exists by your sufferance. But you have been taught to respect this institution; and hence it becomes necessary to enter into details, however painful, and to present you with authorities which you cannot reject. What we have just said of the insecurity of human life, will probably be deemed by you and others as abolition slander. Listen, then, to slaveholders themselves.

"We long to see the day," said the Governor of Kentucky in his message to the Legislature, 1837, "when the law will assert its majesty, and stop the wanton destruction of life which almost daily occurs within the jurisdiction of this commonwealth. Men slaughter each other with almost perfect impunity. A species of common law has grown up in Kentucky, which, were it written down, would, in all civilized countries, cause her to be re-christened, in derision, the land of blood."

The present Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Kentucky [10] a few years since, published an article on the murders in that State. He states that some with whom he had conversed, estimated them at 80 per annum; but that he had rated them at about 30; and that he had ascertained that for the last three years, there had not been "an instance of capital punishment in any white offender." "It is believed," says he, "there are more homicides on an average of two years in any of our more populous counties, than in the whole of several of our States of equal, or nearly equal, population to Kentucky."

Governor McVay, of Alabama, in his message to the Legislature, November 15, 1837, thus speaks, "We hear of homicides in different parts of the State continually, and yet have few convictions and still fewer executions! Why do we hear of stabbings and shootings almost daily in some part or other of our State?"

"Death by Violence.—The moral atmosphere in our State appears to be in a deleterious and sanguinary condition. Almost every exchange paper which reaches us, contains some inhuman and revolting case of murder, or death by violence. Not less than fifteen deaths by violence have occurred, to our certain knowledge, within the past three months."—Grand Gulf Miss. Advertiser, 27th June, 1837.

Contempt of Human Life.—In view of the crimes which are daily committed, we are led to inquire whether it is owing to the inefficiency of our laws, or to the manner in which these laws are administered, that this frightful deluge of human blood flows through our streets and our places of public resort.—New Orleans Bee, 23d May, 1838.

At the opening of the Criminal Court in New Orleans, November 4th, 1837, Judge Lansuque delivered an address, in which, speaking of the prevalence of violence, he used the following language:

"As a Louisiana parent, I reflect with terror, that our beloved children, reared to become one day honorable and useful citizens, may be the victims of these votaries of vice and licentiousness. Without some powerful and certain remedy, our streets will become butcheries, overflowing with the blood of our citizens!"

While the slaveholders are terrified at the idea of the "great democratic rabble," and rejoice in human bondage as superseding the necessity of an "order of nobility, and all the appendages of a hereditary government," they have established a reign of terror, as insurrectionary and as sanguinary in principle, as that created by the sans culottes of the French revolution. We indulge in no idle declamation, but speak the words of truth and soberness.

A public meeting, convened in the church!! in the town of Clinton, Mississippi, 5th September, 1835—

Resolved, "That it is our decided opinion, that any individual who dares to circulate, with a view to effectuate the designs of the abolitionists, any of the incendiary tracts or newspapers now in the course of transmission to this country, is justly worthy, in the sight of God and man, of immediate death; and we doubt not that such would be the punishment of any such offender, in any part of the State of Mississippi where he may be found."

It would be tedious to copy the numerous resolutions of similar import, passed by public meetings in almost every slave State. You well know that the promoters of those lawless and sanguinary proceedings, did not belong to the "rabble"—they were not "mean whites," but rich, influential slaveholders. A meeting was held in 1835 at Williamsburgh, Virginia, which was harangued by no less a personage than John Tyler, once Governor of the State, and since President of the United States: under this gentleman's auspices, and after his address, the meeting resolved—

"That we regard the printing and circulating within our limits, of incendiary publications, tending to excite our slaves to insurrection and rebellion, as treasonable acts of the most alarming character, and that when we detect offenders in the act, we will inflict upon them condign punishment, without resorting to any other tribunal."

The profligacy of this resolution needs no comment. Mr. Tyler well knew that the laws of Virginia, and every other State were abundantly sufficient to punish crime: but he and his fellow lynchers wished to deter the people from receiving and reading anything adverse to slavery; and hence, with their usual audacity, they determined to usurp the prerogative of courts and juries, and throw down all the bulwarks which the law has erected for the protection of innocence.

Newspapers are regarded as the mirrors of public opinion. Let us see what opinions are reflected in those of the South.

The Charleston Courier, 11th August, 1835, declared that "the gallows and the stake" awaited the abolitionists who should dare to "appear in person among us."

"The cry of the whole South should be death, instant death to the abolitionist, wherever he is caught."—Augusta (Geo.) Chronicle.

"Let us declare through the public journals of our country, that the question of slavery is not and shall not be open to discussion; that the system is too deep-rooted among us, and must remain for ever; that the very moment any private individual attempts to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, and the necessity of putting means in operation to secure us from them, in the same moment his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon the dunghill."—Columbia (S.C.) Telescope.

This, it will be noticed, is a threat addressed, not to the Northern abolitionists, but to you, fellow-citizens, to the great majority of the white inhabitants of the South; and you are warned not to express an opinion offensive to your aristocracy.

"Awful but Just Punishment.—We learn, by the arrival of the steamboat Kentucky last evening from Richmond, that Robinson, the Englishman mentioned in the Beacon of Saturday, as being in the vicinity of Lynchburg, was taken about fifteen miles from that town, and hanged on the spot, for exciting the slaves to insurrection."—Norfolk (Va.) Beacon, 10th August, 1835.

"We can assure the Bostonians, one and all, who have embarked in the nefarious scheme of abolishing slavery at the South, that lashes will hereafter be spared the backs of their emissaries. Let them send out their men to Louisiana; they will never return to tell their sufferings, but they shall expiate the crime of interfering with our domestic institutions, by being burned at the stake."—New-Orleans True American.

"Abolition editors in slave States will not dare to avow their opinions. It would be instant death to them."—Missouri Argus.

Here, again, is a threat directed against any of you, who may happen to have the command of types and printer's ink.

Now, we ask what must be the state of society, where the public journals thus justify and stimulate the public thirst for blood? The very idea of trial is scouted, and the mob, or rather the slaveholders themselves, are acknowledged to be the arbiters of life and death. The question we put to you as to the state of society, has been already answered by the official declarations of the Governors of Kentucky and Alabama, and of Judge Lansuque, of New Orleans; as well as by the extracts we have given you from some of the southern journals, relative to the frequency of murders among them. We could farther answer it, by filling sheets with accounts of fearful atrocities. But we purposely refrain from referring to assassinations and private crimes; for such, as already remarked, occur in a greater or less degree in every community, and do not necessarily form a test of the standard of morals. But we ask your attention to a test which cannot be questioned. We will present for your consideration a series of atrocities, perpetrated, not by individuals in secret, but in open day by the slaveholding populace.

We have seen that two of the Southern papers we have quoted, threaten abolitionists with the stake. This awful and horrible punishment has been banished, by the progress of civilization, from the whole of Christendom, with the single exception of the American Slave States. It is scarcely necessary to say, that even in them, it is unknown to the laws, although familiar to the people. It is also deserving of remark, that the two journals which have made this atrocious threat were published, not among the rude borderers of our frontier settlements, but in the populous cities of Charleston and New-Orleans, the very centres of Southern refinement.

"Tuscaloosa (Alab.) June 20, 1827. The negro [one who had killed a Mr. M^cNeilly was taken before a Justice of the Peace, who waived his authority, perhaps through fear, as a crowd of persons had collected, to the number of seventy or eighty, near Mr. People's [the Justice] house. He acted as President of the mob, and put the vote, when it was decided that he should be immediately executed by being burned to death. The sable culprit was led to a tree and tied to it, and a large quantity of pine knots collected and placed around him, and the fatal torch applied to the pile, even against the remonstrances of several gentlemen who were present, and the miserable being was in a short time burned to ashes. This is the second negro who has been thus put to death, without judge or jury in this country."

On the 28th of April, 1836, a free negro was arrested in St. Louis (Missouri) and committed to jail on a charge of murder. A mob assembled and demanded him of the jailor, who surrendered him. The negro was then chained to a tree a short distance from the Court House, and burned to death.

"After the flames had surrounded their prey, and when his clothes were in a blaze all over him, his eyes burnt out of his head, and his mouth seemingly parched to a cinder, some one in the crowd, more compassionate than the rest, proposed to put an end to his misery by shooting him, when it was replied that it would be of no use, since he was already out of his pain. 'No,' said the wretch, 'I am not, I am suffering as much as ever; shoot me, shoot me.' 'No, no,' said one of the fiends who was standing about the sacrifice they were roasting, 'he shall not be shot, I would sooner slacken the fire, if that would increase his misery;' and the man who said this was, we understand, an officer of justice."—Alton Telegraph.

"We have been informed that the slave William, who murdered his master (Huskey) some weeks since, was taken by a party a few days since from the Sheriff of Hot Spring, and burned alive! yes, tied up to the limb of a tree and a fire built under him, and consumed in a slow lingering torture."—Arkansas Gazette, Oct. 29. 1836.

The Natchez Free Trader, 16th June, 1842, gives a horrible account of the execution of the negro, Joseph, on the 5th of that month for murder.

"The body," says that paper, "was taken and chained to a tree immediately on the bank of the Mississippi, on what is called Union Point. The torches were lighted and placed in the pile. He watched unmoved the curling flame as it grew, until it began to entwine itself around and feed upon his body; then he sent forth cries of agony painful to the ear, begging some one to blow his brains out; at the same time surging with almost superhuman strength, until the staple with which the chain was fastened to the tree, not being well secured, drew out, and he leaped from the burning pile. At that moment the sharp ring of several rifles was heard, and the body of the negro fell a corpse to the ground. He was picked up by two or three, and again thrown into the fire and consumed."

"Another Negro Burned.—We learn from the clerk of the Highlander that, while wooding a short distance below the mouth of Red river, they were invited to stop a short time and see another negro burned."—N. O. Bulletin.

Thus we see that burning negroes alive is treated as a spectacle, and strangers are invited to witness it. The victim of this exhibition was the negro Enoch, said to have been an accomplice of Joseph, and was burned a few days after the other.

We have thus given you no less than six instances of human beings publicly burned alive in four slave States, and in each case with entire impunity to the miscreants engaged in the horrible murder. But these were cases which happened to be reported in the newspapers, and with which we happened to become acquainted. There is reason to believe that these executions are not of rare occurrence, and that many of them, either through indifference or policy, are not noticed in the Southern papers.

A recent traveller remarks, "Just before I reached Mobile, two men were burned alive there in a slow fire in the open air, in the presence of the gentlemen of the city. No word was breathed of the transaction in the newspapers."—Martineau's Society in America, vol. i., p. 373.

But the murderous spirit deplored by the Governors of Kentucky and Alabama, and the "frightful deluge of human blood" complained of by the New Orleans editor, had no reference to the murder of negroes. Men who can enjoy the sight of negroes writhing in flames, and are permitted by the civil authorities to indulge in such exhibitions, will not be very scrupulous in taking the lives of each other. You well know how incessantly the work of human slaughter is going on among you: and no reader of your public journals can be ignorant of the frequent occurrence of your deadly street fights. But, for the reason already given, we meddle not with these. We charge the slaveholding community, as such, with sanctioning murder, and protecting the perpetrators, and setting the laws at defiance. This we know is a grievous charge, and most grievous the proof of it. But mistake not our meaning. God forbid we should deny that many of the community to which we refer, utterly abhor the atrocities we are about to detail. We speak of the murderous feelings of the slaveholding community, just as we speak of the politics, the manners, and the morals of any other community, freely acknowledging that there are numerous and honorable exceptions. For the general truth of our assertion, we appeal to the authorities and the facts we have already laid before you, and to those we are about to offer.

You have already seen that the pro-slavery press has recommended the murder of such northern abolitionists as may be caught in the South; we now ask your attention to the efforts made by the slaveholders to get prominent abolitionists into their power.

In 1831, a citizen of Massachusetts established a newspaper at Boston, called the Liberator, and devoted to the cause of negro emancipation. The undertaking was perfectly legal, and he himself, having never been in Georgia, had of course violated none of her laws. The legislature, however, forthwith passed a law, offering a bribe of $5000 to any person who would arrest and bring to trial and conviction, in Georgia, the editor and publisher of the Boston paper. This most atrocious law was "approved" on the 26th Dec., 1831, by William Lumpkin, the Governor. The object of the bribe could have been no other than the abduction and murder of the conductor of the paper—his trial and conviction under Georgia laws being a mere pretence: the Georgia courts have as much jurisdiction over the Press in Paris as in Boston. A Lynch court was the only one that could have taken cognizance of the offence, and its proceedings would undoubtedly have been both summary and sanguinary.

The horrible example thus set by the Georgia Legislature was not without its followers.

At a meeting of slaveholders at Sterling, Sept. 4, 1835, it was formally recommended to the Governor to issue a proclamation, offering the $5000 appropriated by the Act of 1831, as a reward for the apprehension of either of ten persons named in the resolution, citizens of New York and Massachusetts, and one a subject of Great Britain; not one of whom it was even pretended had ever set his foot on the soil of Georgia.

The Milledgeville [Ga.] Federal Union, of Feb. 1, 1836, contained an offer of $10,000 for kidnapping A. A. Phelps, a clergyman residing in the city of New York.

The Committee of Vigilance of the Parish of East Feliciana, offered in the Louisiana Journal of 15th Oct., 1835, $50,000 to any person who would deliver into their hands Arthur Tappan, a New York merchant.

At a public meeting of the citizens of Mount Meigs, Alabama, 13th August, 1836, the Honorable [!] Bedford Ginress in the chair, a reward of $50,000 was offered for the apprehension of Arthur Tappan, or Le Roy Sunderland, a clergyman of the Methodist Church residing in New York.

Let us now witness the practical operation of that murderous spirit which dictated the foregoing villainous bribes. We have already seen the conduct of the slave-holding community to negro offenders; we are now to notice its tender mercies to men of its own color.

In 1835, there was a real or affected apprehension of a servile insurrection in the State of Mississippi. The slaveholders, as usual on such occasions, were exceedingly frightened, and were exceedingly cruel. A pamphlet was afterwards published, entitled "Proceedings of the Citizens of Madison County, Miss., at Livingston, in July, 1835, in relation to the trial and punishment of several individuals implicated in a contemplated insurrection in this State.—Prepared by Thomas Shuckelford, Esquire. Printed at Jackson, Miss." This pamphlet, then, is the Southern account of the affair; and while it is more minute in its details than the narratives published in the newspapers at the time, we are not aware that it contradicts them. It may be regarded as a sort of semi-official report put forth by the slaveholders, and published under their implied sanction. It appears, from this account, that in consequence of "rumors" that the slaves meditated an insurrection—that a colored girl had been heard to say that "she was tired of waiting on the white folks—wanted to be her own mistress for the balance of her days, and clean up her own house, &c.," a meeting was held at which resolutions were signed, organizing a committee, and authorizing them "to bring before them any person or persons, either white or black, and try in a summary manner any person brought before them, with power to hang or whip, being always governed by the laws of the land, so far only as they shall be applicable to the case in question; otherwise to act as in their discretion shall seem best for the benefit of the country and the protection of its citizens."

This was certainly a most novel mode of erecting and commissioning a Court of judicature, with the power of life and death, expressly authorized to act independently of "the laws of the land."

The Constitution of the State of Mississippi, which no doubt many of the honorable Judges of the Court had on other occasions taken an oath to support, contains the following clause:—"No person shall be accused, arrested or detained, except in cases ascertained by law, and according to the forms which the same has prescribed; and no person shall be punished, but in virtue of a law established and promulgated prior to the offence, and legally applied."

Previous to the organization of this Court, five slaves had already been hung by the people. The Court, or rather, as it was modestly called by the meeting who erected it, "the committee," proceeded to try Dr. Joshua Cotton, of New England. It was proved to the satisfaction of the committee that he had been detected in many low tricks—that he was deficient in feeling and affection for his second wife—that he had traded with negroes—that he had asked a negro boy whether the slaves were whipped much, how he would like to be free? &c. It is stated that Cotton made a confession that he had been aiming to bring about a conspiracy. The committee condemned him to be hanged in an hour after sentence.

William Saunders, a native of Tennessee, was next tried. He was convicted "of being often out at night, and giving no satisfactory explanation for so doing"—of equivocal conduct—of being intimate with Cotton, &c. Whereupon, by a unanimous vote, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hung. He was executed with Cotton on the 4th of July.

Albe Dean, of Connecticut, was next tried. He was convicted of being a lazy, indolent man, having very little pretensions to honesty—of "pretending to make a living by constructing washing machines"—of "often coming to the owners of runaways, to intercede with the masters to save them from a whipping." He was sentenced to be hung, and was executed.

A. L. Donavan, of Kentucky, was then put on his trial. He was suspected of having traded with the negroes—of being found in their cabins, and enjoying himself in their Society. It was proved that "at one time he actually undertook to release a negro who was tied, which negro afterwards implicated him," and that he once told an overseer "it was cruel work to be whipping the poor negroes as he was obliged to do." The committee were satisfied, from the evidence before them, that Donavan was an emissary of those deluded fanatics of the North, the abolitionists. He was condemned to be hung, and suffered accordingly.

Ruel Blake was next tried, condemned and hung. "He protested his innocence to the last, and said his life was sworn away."

Here we have a record of no less than ten men, five black and five white, probably all innocent of the crime alleged against them, deliberately and publicly put to death by the slaveholders, without the shadow of legal authority.

The Maysville, Ken. Gazette, in announcing Donavan's murder, says, "he formerly belonged to Maysville, and was a much respected citizen."

A letter from Donavan to his wife, written just before his execution, and published in the Maysville paper, says, "I am doomed to die to-morrow at 12 o'clock, on a charge of having been concerned in a negro insurrection, in this State, among many other whites. We are not tried by a regular jury, but by a committee of planters appointed for the purpose, who have not time to wait on a person for evidence.... Now I must close by saying, before my Maker and Judge, that I go into his presence as innocent of this charge as when I was born.... I must bid you a final farewell, hoping that the God of the widow and the fatherless will give you grace to bear this most awful sentence."

And now, did these butcheries by the Mississippi planters excite the indignation of the slaveholding communities? Receive the answer from an editor of the Ancient Dominion, replying to the comments of a Northern newspaper. "The Journal may depend upon it that the Cottons and the Saunders, men confessing themselves guilty of inciting and plotting insurrection, will be hanged up wherever caught, and that without the formality of a legal trial. Northern or Southern, such will be their inevitable doom. For our part, we applaud the transaction, and none in our opinion can condemn it, who have not a secret sympathy with the Garrison sect. If Northern sympathy and effort are to be cooled and extinguished by such cases, it proves but this, that the South ought to feel little confidence in the professions it receives from that quarter."—Richmond Whig.

About the time of the massacre in Clinton County, another awful tragedy was performed at Vicksburg in the same State. Five men, said to be gamblers, were hanged by the mob on the 5th July, in open day.

The Louisiana Advertiser, of 13th July, says, "These unfortunate men claimed to the last, the privilege of American citizens, the trial by Jury, and professed themselves willing to submit to anything their country would legally inflict upon them: but we are sorry to say, their petition was in vain. The black musicians were ordered to strike up, and the voices of the supplicants were drowned by the fife and drum. Mr. Riddle, the Cashier of the Planters' Bank, ordered them to play Yankee Doodle. The unhappy sufferers frequently implored a drink of water, but they were refused."

The sympathy of the Louisiana editor, so different from his brother of Richmond, was probably owing to the fact, that the murdered men were accused of being gamblers, and not abolitionists.

When we said these five men were hung by the mob, we did not mean what Chancellor Harper calls "the democratic rabble." It seems the Cashier of a Bank, a man to whom the slaveholders entrust the custody of their money, officiated on the occasion as Master of Ceremonies.

A few days after the murders at Vicksburg, a negro named Vincent was sentenced by a Lynch club at Clinton, Miss., to receive 300 lashes, for an alleged participation in an intended insurrection. We copy from the Clinton Gazette.

"On Wednesday evening Vincent was carried out to receive his stripes, but the assembled multitude were in favor of hanging him. A vote was accordingly fairly taken, and the hanging party had it by an overwhelming majority, as the politicians say. He was remanded to prison. On the day of execution a still larger crowd was assembled, and fearing that the public sentiment might have changed in regard to his fate, after everything favorable to the culprit was alleged which could be said, the vote was taken, and his death was demanded by the people. In pursuance of this sentiment, so unequivocally expressed, he was led to a black jack and suspended to one of its branches—we approve entirely of the proceedings; the people have acted properly."

Thus, sixteen human beings were deliberately and publicly murdered, by assembled crowds, in different parts of the State of Mississippi, within little more than one week, in open defiance of the laws and Constitution of the State.

And now we ask, what notice did the chief magistrate of Mississippi, sworn to support her Constitution, sworn to execute her laws—what notice, we ask, did he take of these horrible massacres? Why, at the next session of the Legislature, Governor Lynch, addressing them in reference to abolition, remarked, "Mississippi has given a practical demonstration of feeling on this exciting subject, that may serve as an impressive admonition to offenders; and however we may regret the occasion, we are constrained to admit, that necessity will sometimes prompt a summary mode of trial and punishment unknown to the law."

The iniquity and utter falsehood of this declaration, as applied to the transactions alluded to, are palpable. If the victims were innocent, no necessity required their murder. If guilty, no necessity required their execution contrary to law. There was no difficulty in securing their persons, and bringing them to trial.

In 1841, an unsuccessful attempt was made in Kentucky to murder a man. The assailants were arrested and lodged in jail for trial. Their fate is thus related in a letter by an eye-witness, published in the Cincinnati Gazette:—

"Williamstown, Ky., July 11, 1841.

"The unfortunate men, Lyman Couch and Smith Maythe, were taken out of jail on Saturday about 12 o'clock, and taken to the ground where they committed the horrid deed on Utterback, and at 4 o'clock were hung on the tree where Utterback lay when his throat was cut. The jail was opened by force. I suppose there were from four to seven hundred people engaged in it. Resistance was all in vain. There were three speeches made to the mob, but all in vain. They allowed the prisoners the privilege of clergy for about five hours, and then observed that they had made their peace with God, and they deserved to die. The mob was conducted with coolness and order, more so than I ever heard of on such occasions. But such a day was never witnessed in our little village, and I hope never will be again."

The fact that this atrocity was perpetrated in "our little village," and by a rural population, affords an emphatic and horrible indication of the state of morals in one of the oldest and best of our slave States.

Would that we could here close these fearful narratives; but another and more recent instance of that ferocious lawlessness which slavery has engendered, must still be added. The following facts are gathered from the Norfolk (Va.) Beacon of 19th Nov., 1842.

George W. Lore was, in April, 1842, convicted in Alabama, on circumstantial evidence, of the crime of murder. The Supreme Court granted a new trial, remarking, as is stated in another paper, that the testimony on which he was convicted was "unfit to be received by any court of justice recognized among civilized nations." In the mean time, Lore escaped from jail, and was afterwards arrested. He was seized by a mob, who put it to vote, whether he should be surrendered to the civil authority or be hung. Of 132 votes, 130 were for immediate death, and he was accordingly hung at Spring Hill, Bourbon County, on the 4th November.

And now, fellow-citizens, what think you of Mr. Calhoun's "most safe and stable basis for free institutions?" Do you number trial by jury among free institutions? You see on what basis it rests—the will of the slaveholders. You see by what tenure you and your children hold your lives. In New York, you are told by high Southern authority, "you may find loafer, and loco-foco, and agrarian, and the most corrupt and depraved of rabbles." But we ask you, where would your life be most secure if charged with crime, amid the rabble of New York or that of Clinton, Vicksburg, and Williamstown? We think we have fully proved our assertion respecting the disregard of human life felt by the slaveholding community; and of course their contempt for those legal barriers which are erected for its protection. Let us now inquire more particularly how far slavery is indeed a stable basis, on which free institutions may securely rest.

VIII. DISREGARD FOR CONSTITUTIONAL OBLIGATIONS.

Governor McDuffie, in his speech of 1834 to the South Carolina Legislature, characterized the Federal Constitution as "that miserable mockery of blurred, and obliterated, and tattered parchment." Judging from their conduct, the slaveholders, while fully concurring with the Governor in his contempt for the national parchment, have quite as little respect for their own State Constitution and Laws.

The "tattered parchment" of which Mr. McDuffie speaks, declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States." Art. IV. Sec. 2. Notwithstanding this express provision, there are in almost every slave State, if not in all, laws for seizing, imprisoning, and then selling as slaves for life, citizens having black or yellow complexions, entering within their borders. This is done under pretence that the individuals are supposed to be fugitives from bondage. When circumstances forbid such a supposition, other devices are adopted, for nullifying the provision we have quoted. By a law of Louisiana, every free negro or mulatto, arriving on board any vessel as a mariner or passenger, shall be immediately imprisoned till the departure of the vessel, when he is to be compelled to depart in her. If such free negro or mulatto returns to the State, he is to be imprisoned for five years.

The jailor of Savannah some time since reported ten stewards as being in his custody. These were free citizens of other States, deprived of their liberty solely on account of the complexion their Maker had given them, and in direct violation of the express language of the Federal Constitution. If any free negro or mulatto enters the State of Mississippi, for any cause however urgent, any white citizen may cause him to be punished by the Sheriff with thirty-nine lashes, and if he does not immediately thereafter leave the State, he is sold as a slave.

In Maryland, a free negro or mulatto, coming into the State, is fined $20, and if he returns he is fined $500, and on default of payment, is sold as a slave. Truly indeed have the slaveholders rendered the Constitution a blurred, obliterated, and tattered parchment. But whenever this same Constitution can, by the grossest perversion, be made instrumental in upholding and perpetuating human bondage, then it acquires, for the time, a marvellous sanctity in their eyes, and they are seized with a holy indignation at the very suspicion of its profanation.

The readiness with which Southern Governors prefer the most false and audacious claims, under color of Constitutional authority, exhibits a state of society in which truth and honor are but little respected.

In 1833, seventeen slaves effected their escape from Virginia in a boat, and finally reached New York. To recover their slaves as such, a judicial investigation in New York would be necessary, and the various claimants would be required to prove their property. A more convenient mode presented itself. The Governor of Virginia made a requisition on the Executive of New York for them as fugitive felons, and on this requisition, a warrant was issued for their arrest and surrender. The pretended felony was stealing the boat in which they had escaped.

In 1839, a slave escaped from Virginia on board of a vessel bound to New York. It was suspected, but without a particle of proof, that some of the crew had favored his escape; and immediately the master made oath that three of the sailors, naming them, had feloniously stolen the slave; and the Governor, well knowing there was no slave-market in New York, and that no man could there be held in slavery, had the hardihood to demand the surrender of the mariners, on the charge of grand larceny; and, in his correspondence with the Governor of New York, declared the slave was worth six or seven hundred dollars, and remarked that stealing was "recognized as a crime by all laws, human and divine."

In 1841, a female slave, belonging to a man named Flournoy, in Georgia, was discovered on board a vessel about to sail for New York, and was recovered by her master. It was afterwards supposed, from the woman's story, that she had been induced by one of the passengers to attempt her escape. Whereupon Flournoy made oath that John Greenman did feloniously steal his slave. But the Governor of New York had already refused to surrender citizens of his State, on a charge so palpably false and absurd. It was therefore deemed necessary to trump up a very different charge against the accused; and hence Flournoy made a second affidavit, that John Greenman did feloniously steal and take away three blankets, two shawls, three frocks, one pair of earrings, and two finger-rings, the property of deponent. Armed with these affidavits, the Governor demanded the surrender of Greenman under the Constitution. Not an intimation was given by His Excellency, when he made the demand, of the real facts of the case, which, in a subsequent correspondence, he was compelled to admit. It turned out that the woman, instead of being stolen, went voluntarily, and no doubt joyfully, on board the vessel; and that the wearing apparel, &c., were the clothes and ornaments worn by her; nor was there a pretence that Greenman had ever touched them, or ever had them in his possession.

In 1838, Rev. John B. Mahan, a Methodist preacher, residing in Ohio, was reported to have given aid and shelter to fugitive slaves from Kentucky, and forthwith the Grand Jury of Mason County, in that State, indicted him, as being "late of the County of Mason," for aiding two slaves in making their escape from said county. On the strength of this indictment, Governor Clark, of Kentucky, issued his requisition on the Governor of Ohio, wherein he stated that the said Mahan "has fled from justice, and is now going at large in the State of Ohio;" and that by virtue of the authority vested in him by the "Constitution and Laws of the United States, he did demand the said John B. Mahan, as a fugitive from the justice of the laws of this State." On this requisition Mahan was seized, carried into Kentucky, put in irons, and kept in prison as a felon for about ten weeks, when, after a trial which lasted six days, he was acquitted by the jury. Now it was a matter of notoriety, and admitted by the prosecution, that Mahan had not been in Kentucky for about twenty years!! Yet day after day was spent in endeavors to procure the conviction of a man who had committed no offence against the laws of the State, and whose person had been seized in consequence of a gross fraud, and a palpable and acknowledged falsehood. But how happened it that the slaveholders permitted their prey to escape? Fortunately for Mahan, the Governor of Ohio, after surrendering him, discovered the imposition that had been practised, and officially informed the Governor of Kentucky, that he could not consent that a citizen of Ohio should be taken to another State, and tried for an offence not committed within her jurisdiction. The publication of this letter drew the attention of the community to the infamous outrage that had been practised. If, after this, Mahan had been Lynched, or even judicially punished, a controversy would have arisen between the two States, which would necessarily have given new strength and influence to the anti-slavery cause.

But perhaps the most insolent attempt yet made to pervert the Federal Constitution to the support of slavery, was the expedient devised in Alabama to muzzle the Northern press. An article appeared in a newspaper published in New York, in 1835, which gave offence to certain planters in that State; and forthwith a grand jury, on their oaths, indicted the New York publisher, "late of the County of Tuscaloosa," for endeavoring to excite insurrection among the slaves, by circulating a seditious paper; and on this indictment the Governor had the impudence to make a formal requisition for the surrender of the publisher, as a fugitive from justice, although he had never breathed the air of Alabama.

We have said that the slaveholders hold their own laws and Constitutions in the same contempt as those of the Federal Government, whenever they conflict with the security and permanency of slavery. One of the most inestimable of constitutional privileges is trial by jury; and this, as we have seen, is trampled under foot with impunity, at the mandate of the slaveholders. Even John Tyler, as it appears, is for inflicting summary punishment on abolitionists, by a Lynch club, "without resorting to any other tribunal."

We now proceed to inquire how far they respect the liberty of speech and of the press.