F A R M E R S' REGISTER. 



729 



One would think that tlie circles of ethics and 

 logic could not furnish less doubtful questions than 

 these. Were the whites of Si. Domingo morally 

 bound to bring on themselves the mass^acre pro- 

 duced by the liberation ol" their slaves'? Is such 

 a saciifice of freemen to make freemen of slaves, 

 virtuous or wicked? Will it advance or destroy 

 the principles of morality, religion and civil liber- 

 ty? Is it wise or foolish? 



The history of parties in its utmost malignity is 

 but a faint mirror lor reflecting the consequences of 

 a white and a black party. If badges and names 

 have been able to madden men in all ages, up to 

 robbery and murder in their most atrocious forms, 

 no doubt can exist of the consequences of placing 

 two nations of distinct colors and features on the 

 Bame theatre, to contend, not about sounds and 

 signs, but for wealth and power. 



And yet an amiable and peaceable religious 

 eecf, have been long laboring with some success, 

 to plunge three-fourths of the union into a civil 

 war of a complexion so inveterate, as to admit of 

 no issue, but the extermination of one entire party. 

 Suppose the extermination shall fall on the blacks, 

 the ferocity acquired by the whites during the con- 

 test, and the destruction of the labor in three- 

 fourths of the union, will not endow the remain- 

 ing fourth with wealth or happiness. If the 

 whites should be the victims of this enthusiastic 

 philanthropy, and our northern brethren should 

 Bucceed in overwhelming the southern states 

 with the negro patriotism and civilization, what 

 will they have done for the benefit of the liber- 

 ty, virtue or happiness of mankind? The French 

 revolution, bottomed upon as correct abstract 

 principles and sounder practical hopes, turned 

 out to be a foolish and mischievous specula- 

 tion; what then can be expected from mak- 

 ing republicans of negro slaves, and conquer- 

 ors of ignorant infuriated barbarians? What can 

 those who are doing the greatest mischiefs from 

 the best motives, to their fellow-citizens, to them- 

 selves and to their country, expect from such 

 preachers of the gospel, such champions of liber- 

 ty, and such neighboring possessors of a territory 

 Jarcrer than their own. 



But what will not enthusiasm attempt? It at- 

 tempted to make freemen of the people of France ; 

 the experiment pronounced that they were incapa- 

 ble of liberty. It attempted to compound a free 

 nation of black and whiie people in St. Domingo. 

 The experiment pronounced that one color must 

 perish. And now rendered blinder by experience, 

 it proposes to renew the last experiment, though 

 it impressed truth by sanctions of inconceivable 

 horror; and again to create a body politic, as 

 monstrous and unnatural as a mongrel half white 

 man and half negro. 



^ Do these hasty, or in the language of exact 

 truth, fanatic philosophers, patriots or Christians, 

 suppose that the negroes could be made free, and 

 yet kept from property and equal civil rights ; or 

 that both or either of these avenues to power 

 could be opened to them, and yet that some pre- 

 cept or incantation could prevent their entrance? 

 As rivals tor rule with the whites, the collision 

 would be immediate, and the catastrophe speedy. 

 Divested of equal civil rights and wealth to pre- 

 vent this rivalship, but endowed with personal li- 

 berty, they would constitute the most complete 

 instrument for invasion or ambition, hitherto forged 

 throughout the entire circle of human folly. 



For what virtuous purpose are the eouthern 

 runaway negroes countenanced in the northern 

 states? Do these states wish the souihern to try 

 tlie St. Domingo experiment ? If not, wiiy do 

 they keep alive the St. Domingo spirit? War ia 

 the match which will in the course of time be put 

 to such a spirit, and an explosion might follow, 

 which would shake our nation from the centre to 

 its extremities. Is it humanity, wisdom or reli- 

 gion, or some adversary of all three, which pre- 

 pares the stock of combustibles for this explosion ? 

 Suppose France was about to invade the United 

 Slates, and should ask congress previously to ad- 

 mit a million of her most desperate people into the 

 southern states, ready to join and aid her armies; 

 could the northern members of the union find any 

 motive drawn from policy, religion, morality or 

 self-interest, for agreeing to the proposal? And 

 yet in case of such an invasion, a million of ne- 

 groes, either slaves, but artificially filled with a 

 violent impatience of their condition, and deadly 

 hatred of their masters; or free-men, but excluded 

 from wealth and power, would hardly be less fero- 

 cious, merciless or dangerous, tlian a million of 

 desperate French people. 



A policy which weakens or renders incapable of 

 self-defence at least three- fourths of the union, 

 must also be excessively injurious to the remaining 

 fourth, whose wealth and security must increase 

 or diminish by increasing or diminishing the wealth 

 and security of the larger portion. Nor does the 

 least present gain, afford to the northern states a 

 temptation for incurring so dreadful an evil. Their 

 manners will neither be improved, nor their hap- 

 piness advanced, by sprinkling their cities with a 

 yearly emigration of thieves, murderers and vil- 

 lains of every degree, though recommended by 

 the training of slavery, a black skin, a woolly head, 

 and an African contour. 



And yet even the northern newspapers are 

 continually dealing out fraternity to this race, and 

 to this moral character, and opprobrium to their 

 white masters, with as little justice in the last case, 

 as taste in the first. What had the present gene- 

 ration to do with the dilemma in which it is in- 

 volved? How lew even of its ancestors were 

 concerned in stealing and transporting negroes 

 from Africa? If some remnants of such monsters 

 exist, they are not to be found in the southern 

 quarters of the union. And if self-preservation 

 shall force the slave-holders into stricter meacureg 

 of precaution than they have hitherto adopted, 

 those who shall have driven them into these mea- 

 sures, by continually exciting their negroes to cut 

 their throats, will accuse them of tyranny with as 

 little reason, as the prosecutor of the slave trade 

 accuses them of negro stealing. 



The fiict is, that negro slavery is an evil which 

 the United States must look in the face. To whine 

 over it is cowardly ; to aggravate it, criminal ; and 

 10 forbear to alleviate it, because it cannot be whol- 

 ly cured, foolish. Rewards and punishments, the 

 sanctions of the best government, and the origin of 

 love and fear, are rendered useless by the ideas 

 excited in the French revolution ; by the example 

 of St. Domingo ; by the lure of free negroes 

 mingled with slaves ; and by the reproaches to 

 masters and sympathies for slaves, breathed forth 

 from the northern states. Sympathies, such ae if 

 the negroes should transfer their affections from 

 their own species to the baboons. Under impres- 



