An extraordinary colloquy took place in the United States Senate some
short time since between Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun, in which the latter
Senator maintained with much vehemence that slavery is not an evil, but
"a good, a great good," and reproached Mr. Rives, in sharp terms, for
admitting the contrary. As his remarks were reported by the
stenographers at the time, they contained some very insulting allusions
to the free laborers of the Northern States, whom Mr. Calhoun spoke of
in the most contemptuous terms as serfs and vassals, far beneath the
negro bondmen of the South in moral degradation. An elaborate report was
some days afterward published in the Washington papers, which probably
had undergone the revision of the several speakers; and from that the
offensive expressions relative to the free citizens of the North were
wholly omitted...
We have Mr. Calhoun's own warrant for attacking his positions with
all the fervour which a high sense of duty can give; for we do hold from
the bottom of our soul that slavery is an evil, a deep, detestable,
damnable evil; an evil in all its aspects; an evil to the blacks and a
greater evil to the whites; an evil, moral, social, and political; an
evil which shows itself in the languishing condition of agriculture at
the South, in its paralyzed commerce, and in the prostration of the
mechanic arts; an evil that stares you in the face from uncultivated
fields, and howls in your ears through the tangled recesses of the
Southern swamps and morasses. Slavery is such an evil that it withers
what it touches. Where it is once securely established, the land becomes
desolate, as the tree inevitably perishes which the sea-hawk chooses for
its nest; while freedom, on the contrary, flourishes like the tanner, on
the loftiest and least sheltered rocks, and clothes with its refreshing
verdure what without it would frown in naked and incurable sterility.
If anyone desires an illustration of the opposite influences of
slavery and freedom, let him look at the two sister States of Kentucky
and Ohio. Alike in soil and climate, and divided only by a river whose
translucent waters reveal, through nearly the whole breadth, the sandy
bottom over which they sparkle, how different are they in all the
respects over which man has control! On the one hand, the air is vocal
with the mingled tumult of a vast and prosperous population. Every
hillside smiles with an abundant harvest; every valley shelters a
thriving village; the click of a busy mill drowns the prattle of every
rivulet, and all the multitudinous sound of business denote happy
activity in every branch of social occupation.
This is the State which, but a few years ago, slept in the
unbroken solitude of nature. The forest spread an interminable canopy of
shade over the dark soil, on which the fat and useless vegetation rotted
at ease, and through the dusky vistas of the wood only savage beasts and
more savage men prowled in quest of prey. The whole land now blossoms
like a garden. The tall and interlacing trees have unlocked their hold,
and bowed before the woodman's axe. The soil is disencumbered of the
mossy trunks which had reposed upon it for ages. The rivers flash in the
sunlight and the fields smile with waving harvests. This is Ohio, and
this what freedom has done for it. Let us turn to Kentucky, and note the
opposite influences of slavery. A narrow and unfrequented path through
the close and sultry canebrake conducts us to a wretched hovel. It
stands in the midst of an unweeded field, whose dilapidated enclosure
scarcely protects it from the lowing and hungry kine. Children half-clad
and squalid, and destitute of the buoyancy natural to their age, lounge
in the sunshine, while their parent saunters apart to watch his languid
slaves drive the ill-appointed team afield. This is not a fancy picture.
It is a true copy of one of the features which make up the aspect of the
State - and of every State where the moral leprosy of slavery covers the
people with its noisome scales. A deadening lethargy benumbs the limbs
of the body politic. A stupor settles on the arts of life. Agriculture
reluctantly drags the plough and harrow to the field, only when scourged
by necessity. The axe drops from the woodman's nerveless hand the moment
his fire is scantily supplied with fuel; and the fen, undrained, sends
up its noxious exhalations to rack with cramps and agues the frame
already too much enervated by a moral epidemic, to creep beyond the
sphere of the material miasma.
Heaven knows we have no disposition to exaggerate the deleterious
influences of slavery. We would rather pause far within the truth, than
transgress it ever so little. There are evils which it invariably
generates a thousand times more pernicious than those we have faintly
touched. There are evils which affect the moral character, and poison
the social relations, of those who breathe the atmosphere of slavery,
more to be deplored than its paralyzing influence on their physical
condition. Whence comes the hot and imperious temper of Southern
statesmen, but from their unlimited domination over their fellow-men?
Whence comes it that "the church-going bell" so seldom fills the air
with its pleasant music, inviting the population to religious worship?
Whence comes it that Sabbath schools diffuse to so small a number of
their children the inestimable benefits of education? Whence comes it
that the knife and the pistol are so readily resorted to for the
adjustment of private quarrel?
The answer to these and many kindred questions will sufficiently
show that slavery is indeed an evil of the most hideous and destructive
kind; and it therefore becomes the duty of every wise and virtuous man
to exert himself to put it down.
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