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Show 316 SLAVERY IN TIIE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, abolitionists generally, as the body containing tho part of which he spoke; there was another part whom be could not qualify as good people, seeking benevolent ends by mistaken means, but as incendiaries and agitators, with diabolical objects in view, to be accomplished by wicked and deplorable means. lie did not go in to the proofs now to establish · the correctness of his opinion of this latter class, but he presumed it would be admitted that every attempt to work upon the passions of the slaves, and to excite thcrn to mnrdcr their owners, was a wicked and diabolical attempt, and tho work of a midnight incendiary. Pictnres of slave degrnclation and misery, and of the white man's lnxury and cruelLy, were attempts of this kind ; for they were appeals to the vengeance of slaves, and not to the intelligence or reason of those who legislated for them. lie [J\1r. B. J had had many pictures of this kind, as well as many cl iabolical publications, sent to him ou this su bjcct during the last summer. the whole of which Lc had ca. .. t into the fire, and should not' lmve thought of referring to the circumstance at this time / as displaying the character of the incendiary part of the abolitionists, had he not, within those few days past, and while abolition petitions were pouring into the other end of the Capitol, received one of these pictures, the design of which could he nothing but mischief of the blackest dye. It was a print from an engraving, (and Mr. B. exhibited it / and handed it to senators near him,) representing a large and spreading tree of liberty, beneath whose ample shade a slave owner was at one time luxnrionsly reposing, with slaves fanning him : at another, carried forth in a palanquin, to view the half-naked laborers in the cotton field, whom drivers, with whips, were scourging to the task. The print was evidently from the abolition mint, and came to him by some other conveyance than that of the mail, for there was no po t-mark of any kind to identify its origin, and to indicate its line of march. For what purpose could snch a pic· SLAVERY IN TilE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 317 ture be intended, unless to inflame the passions of slaves? And why engrave it, except to multiply copies for extensive distribution? But it was not pictures alone that operated upon the passions of the slaves; but speeches, publications, petitions prcscnteu in Congress, and the whole machinery of abolition societies. None of those things went to the understand!ngs of the slaves, but to their passions, all imperfectly understood, an.d inspiri.ng vagnc h.or.es, and s~imulating abortive and fatn.l msurrcctwns. Soc1cllcs, cspccwJly, were the fou11dation of the greatest mischiefs. Whatever might be their objects, the slaves never did, and never can, understand them but in one way : as allies organized for action, and ready to march to their aid on the first signal of insurrection. It was thus that the massacre of San Domingo was made. The society in Paris, Los .Am is des N oirs, friends of the blacks, with its affiliated societ.ies throughout France and in London, made thai massacre. And who composed that society ? In the beginning, iL comprised the extremes of virtue and of vice; it contained the best and the basest of human kind. Lafayette and the Abbe Gregoire, those purest of philanthropists ; anu Marat, and .A.nacharsis Cloots, those imps of bell in human shape. In the end, (for all such societies run the same career of degeneration,) the good men, disgusted with their associates, retired from the scene, and the wicked ruled at pleasure. Declamations against slavery, publications in gazettes, pictures, petitions to the constituent assembly, were the mode of proceeding; and the fi h women of Pari, -be said it with humiliation, because American females had signed the pclitions now before us-the fish women of Paris, the very poissardes from the quays of the Seine, became the obstreperous champions of West India emancipation. The effect upon the French islands is known to the world; but what is not known to the world, or not sufficiently known to it is that the same societies which wrapt in flames ' |