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Show 818 SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. and drenched in blood the beautiful island, which was then a garden and i now a wildcrnc. s, were Lhc means of oxcitin an insurrection upon our continent, in Louisiana. g At theses ion of 1839, the slavery question being under discussion in the Senate, 1\fr. Benton said, I was on the subject of slavery, as connected with the l"lissouri que. Lion, when last on the floor. The Senator fl·om South Carolina [Mr. Ilayne ], could see ~1othing in Lhc question bcfo.re ~he senate, nor in any prev1ous part of the debate, to JU L1fy the introduction of that topic. Neither could I. lie thought he saw the ghost of the :Missouri question brought in among us. So did I. lie was astonished at the apparition. I was not: for n. close obse1·vance of the signs in the west bad prepared me for this development from the east. I wns well prepa1·cd for that invective against slavery, an<l for that l:lmplification of tho ble sings of exemption from slavery, exemplified in the coudition of Ohio, which the Senator from Massachusetts indulged in, and which the object in view required to be derived from the north cast. I cnt the root of that derivation by reading a passage from the journals of the old Congress ; but this will not prevent tho invccti vo and encomium from going forth to do their office; nor obliterate the line which was drawn between tho free State of Ohio and the slave State of Kentucky. If the only results of this invective and encomium were to exalt still higher the oratorical fame of the speaker, I should spend not a moment in remarking upon them. l3nt it is not to be forgotten that the terrible l\lissouri agitation took its rise from the 11 substanre of two speeches" delivered on this floor· and since that time, anti-slavory spceche , coming from' the Aame political and geographical quarter, are not to be disregarded here. What was said upon that topic was certainly intended for SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COI~UMBIA. 319 the north side of tho Potomac and Ohio ; to the people then, of that division of the Uuion, 1 wish to address myself and to disabuse them of some erroneous impressions. To them I can t ruly say, that slavery, in the abstract, has but few advocates or defenders in the sla.vcholding Stntrs, anrl that slavery as it is, an hereditary in stitution descended upon us from our ancestors, would have fewer advocates among us than it has, if those who have nothing to do with the subject would only let us alone. rrbc sentiment in favor of slavery was much weaker before those in termeddlers bc(!;an their operations than it is at present. 'rhe views of leading men in the North nn<l the South were indisputably the same in the earlier p eriod~ of our govcmmcnt. Of this our legislative hi. tory contains the highest proof. rrllC foreign slave trade was prohibited in Virginia, ns soon as the !{,evolution began. It was one of her fi1·st acts of sovereignty. In the convention of that Stnto whic.:h adopted the federal Constitution, it was an objection to that instrument that it tolerated the Africnn slave trade for twenty years. Nothing that has n.ppearcd since has surpa sed the indignant denunciations of this tramc by Patrick Jienry, George Mason, and others in that convcn tion. Si1·, I rcgar<l with admiration, that is to say, with wonder, the sublime morali ty of those who cannot bear the abstract contemplation of slavery, at the distance of five hundred or a thousand miles off. It is entirely above, that is to say, it affects a vast superiority over the morality of the primitive Christians, the Apostles of Christ, an<l Christ himself. Christ and the apostles appeared in a province of the Roman empire, when that empire wns called tho Roman wol'ld, and that world was filled with laves. Forty millions was the estimated number, being one-fourth of the whole population. Single individuals held twenty thousand slaves. A freed man, one who had himself been a slave, died the |