Hence the people of
those States felt no scruple in holding the black or colored race
as slaves. Liberty, said they, is the right only of those who
have the ability to assert and maintain it. Let the negro prove
that he has this ability by asserting and maintaining his
freedom, and he will prove his right to be free, and that it is a
gross outrage, a manifest injustice, to enslave him; but, till
then, let him be my servant, which is best for him and for me.
Why ask me to free him? I shall by doing so only change the form
of his servitude. Why appeal to me! Am I my brother's keeper?
Nay, is he my brother? Is this negro, more like an ape or a
baboon than a human being, of the same race with myself? I
believe it not. But in some instances, at least, my dear
slaveholder, your slave is literally your brother, and sometimes
even your son, born of your own daughter. The tendency of the
Southern democrat was to deny the unity of the race, as well as
all obligations of society to protect the weak and helpless, and
therefore all true civil society.
At the North there has been, and is even yet, an opposite
tendency--a tendency to exaggerate the social element, to
overlook the territorial basis of the state, and to disregard the
rights of individuals. This tendency has been and is strong in
the people called abolitionists. The American abolitionist is so
engrossed with the unity that he loses the solidarity of the
race, which supposes unity of race and multiplicity of
individuals; and falls to see any thing legitimate and
authoritative in geographical divisions or territorial
circumscriptions.
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