362 SLAVERY AND DISSOLUTION. 



itself destined only to a brief continuance on the Ameri 

 can continent.* 



The question of a dissolution of the Union connects 

 itself, also, with the condition of slavery in the United 

 States, in another point of view, which is not without 

 interest to those who concern themselves about the 

 future condition of the coloured race in the southern 

 States. So long as the north and south are connected 

 together under one Government and one general Legis- 

 ture, the moral influence of the free States, as well as 

 their weight in Congress, must exercise a controlling 

 and repressing influence over the slave power, and secure 

 a greater regard to humanity in the treatment of the 

 coloured population. Were it set free from such control 

 by a dissolution of the Union, the opposition of interests 

 and feeling which would naturally arise between the 

 north and the south then forming separate nations 



* A convention has recently been held at Richmond, in Virginia, 

 on the subject of the &quot;expulsion of the free negroes/ in which these 

 people were declared to be &amp;lt;e adverse in feeling, adverse in sentiment, 

 and adverse in interest to every community in which they are found ; 

 not to be citizens; to have none of the rights of citizens; not to be an 

 integral part of the community ; to be inducing a disease which is eating 

 into the very bowels of the body politic, and to be increasing in the 

 State to an alarming extent.&quot; Among the practical conclusions! to 

 which this convention arrived, were, first, That no persons emancipated 

 in the State should be entitled to their freedom, unless the emancipator 

 should first have provided for the removal of the freed from the United 

 States, or for the support of such of them (the aged) as the Legislature 

 might allow to remain in the State. Second, That, in future, no will 

 should be registered by which any slaves were declared free. 



It may be more surprising to some, as indicating the mental condi 

 tion and mistaken sincerity of the people of the southern States, to 

 learn that, in November last, (1850,) the Governor of South Carolina, 

 in his annual address to the Legislature, after adverting to the doom 

 then appearing to impend upon the civil institutions of the south, 

 recommended &quot; a day of fasting and prayer, to invoke God s protection 

 and guidance in this our day of trouble and affliction, that he would 

 graciously vouchsafe to enlighten the minds of our federal rulers, the 

 north and its citizens, and direct them in the way of truth, of reason, 

 and of justice ! &quot; 



