OCR Text |
Show 60 in general, but a peculiar comfort to the slaveholders. They monopo1 1. ze the education ' own the wealth, have all the political power, of the South,- are t~e "ari.stocracy." But, since the American Revolution, I thmk this class has not borne and bred a single man who has made any valuable contribution to the art, science, literature, morals, or religion of the American people. Marshall's" Life of Washington" is the only great literary work of the South ; its hero was born in 1732, its author in 1755; and both, W a::;hington the hero and Marshall the writer~ at their death, abjured the " peculiar institution" of the South. The Southern "aristocracy" rears two things,- Negro Slaves, of which it is often the father; and Regressive Politicians, who make the institutions to keep the slaves in bondage for ever, shutting them out from Christianity and Democracy. Behold the "aristocracy" of the South! By their fruits ye shall know them. Of the general morals of this class, I need not speak : " the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." Since the 1st of January, they have burned four negroes alive, as a joyous spectacle and " act of faith ; " a sort of profession of Christianity, like the more ceremonious Autos-da-je of their Spanish prototypes. Yet among the slaveholders are noble men; some who, but for their surroundings, would have stood with those eminent in talent station and in ' ' service, too, the forerunners of human progress. Blame them for their wrong, pity them for the misfortune which they suffer. Yet let me do the South no injustice. Her three hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders have ruled the nation for sixty years; her politicians have beat the North in all great battles. Now, we commonly judge the South by the slaveholders. This is wrong: it is like measuring England by her gentry, France and Germany by their men of science and letters, Italy by her priests. You shall judge what the whole n1ass 61 of the people are when the "aristocracy," the picked men, are of that stamp. 2. Next are the Non-Slaveholders, four and three-quarter millions of men. Some of these are noble men, with property in land and goods, with some intelligence; but, as a class, they are both necessitous and illiterate, with small political power. They are cursed by slavery, which they yet defend; for it makes labor a disgrace, and, if poor, puts them on the same level with the slave himself. Slavery hinders their development in respect to property, intellectual culture, and manly character; yet, as a whole, they are too ignorant to understand the cause which keeps them down. The morals of this class are exceedingly low: it abounds in murders, and is full of cruelty towards its victims. Nay, where else in Christendom, save Spanish America, is the Caucasian found to take delight in burning his brother with a slow fire, for his own sport, and to please a licentious mob? 3. The third class consists of the Slaves themselves; of whom I need say only this,- that public opinion and the law, which is only the thunder from that cloud, keep them at Labor and from Government, from Christianity and Democracy, from all the Welfare and Development of the age, and seek to crush out the Instinct of Progress from the very nature of the victims. The slave has no Personal Rights, ecclesiastical, political, social, economical, individual; no right to property,- a human accident; none to his body or soul,- the substance of humanity itself. But I fear you do not yet quite understand the difference between the Regressive Force of Slavery at the South, and the Progressive Force of Freedom at the .North. Therefore, to see in noonday light the effect of each on the present Welfare and the future Progress of a people, compare an old typical Slave State with an old typical Free State, |