195. Wylie & Co., Liverpool, May 28, 1863. 357. Captain Sherwin, July 1, 1863. Soldiers who had shot deserters, March 12, 1864. As to non-enrolment of slaves in slave States not declared in rebellion, December 31, 1863. SLAVERY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. THE CONSTITUTION. THE Constitution of the United States was ordained and established by the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity. HOW IT HAS BEEN VIOLATED. A handful of slave-masters have broken up that Union, have overthrown justice, and have destroyed domestic tranquillity. Instead of contributing to the common defence and public welfare, or securing the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, they have waged war upon their country, and have attempted to establish, over the ruins of the Republic, an aristocratic government founded upon Slavery. 1 THE "PECULIAR INSTITUTION.” It is the conviction of many thoughtful persons that slavery has now become practically irreconcilable with republican institutions, and that it constitutes, at the present time, the chief obstacle to the restoration of the Union. They know that slavery can triumph only by overthrowing the republic; they believe that the republic can triumph only by overthrowing slavery. THE PRIVILEGED CLASS. Slaveholding communities constitute the only privileged class of persons who have been admitted into the Union. They alone have the right to vote for what they claim to hold as property, while in the free States citizens vote only for themselves. The former are allowed to count, as part of their representative numbers, three fifths of all slaves. If this privilege, which was accorded only to the original States, had not been extended (contrary, as many jurists contend, to the true intent and meaning of the constitution) so as to include other States subsequently formed, the stability of government would not have been seriously endangered by the temporary toleration of this " institution," although it was inconsistent with the principles which that instrument embodied, and revolting to the sentiments cherished by a people who had issued to the world the Declaration of Independence, and had fought through the revolutionary war to vindicate and maintain the rights of man. UNEXPECTED GROWTH OF SLAVERY. The system of involuntary servitude, which had received, as it merited, the general condemnation of leading southern and northern statesmen of this country, who were most familiar with its evils, and of all fair-minded persons throughout the world, seemed, at the time when our government was founded, about to vanish and disappear from this continent, when the spinning jenny of Crompton, the loom of Wyatt, the cotton gin of Whitney, and the manufacturing capital. of England, combined to create a new and unlimited demand for that which is now the chief product of southern agriculture. Suddenly, as if by magic, the smouldering embers of slavery were rekindled, and its flames, like autumnal fires upon the prairies, having swept over and desolated the Southern States, now threaten to destroy the free States of the North. Hence we are called on to encounter dangers and meet emergencies not anticipated by the founders of our government, SLAVERY ABOLISHED BY EUROPEAN NATIONS. In other countries the scene has been reversed. France, with unselfish patriotism, renounced slavery in 1794; and though Napoleon afterwards reëstablished servitude in most of the colonies, it was finally abolished in 1848. England has merited and received her highest tribute of honor from the enlightened nations of the world for that great act of Parliament, in 1833, whereby she proclaimed universal emancipation. In 1844 King Oscar informed the Swedish states of his desire to do away with involuntary servitude in his dominions in 1846 the legislature provided pecuniary means. for carrying that measure into effect; and now all the slaves have become freemen. Charles VIII., King of Denmark, celebrated the anniversary of the birth of the Queen Dowager by abolishing slavery in his dependencies, on the 28th of July, 1847. Within the present year (1862) the Emperor of Russia has consummated the last and grandest act of emancipation in modern times. While Europe has thus adopted and approved the leading principle of our constitution, as founded on justice, and as essential to public welfare, the United States have practically repudiated and abandoned it. Europe, embarrassed by conservative and monarchical institutions, accepts the preamble to that instrument, as a just exposition of the true objects for which governments should be established, and accordingly abolishes involuntary servitude, while, in this country, slavery, having grown strong, seeks by open rebellion to break up the Union, and to destroy republican democracy. SLAVERY IN 1862 NOT SLAVERY IN 1788. However harmless African bondage may have been in 1788, it is now believed that the slave-masters of the present day, with few but honorable exceptions, cannot, or will not conduct themselves so as to render it longer possible, by peaceable association with them, to preserve the Union, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, the general welfare, the common defence, or the blessings of liberty to ourselves or our posterity. The wide-spread but secret conspiracies of traitors in the slave States within the last thirty years, their hatred of our government, and determination to * Note to Tenth Edition. To the above we may add that Mexico abolished slavery, and prohibited it in all future time, by a law passed soon after her severance from Spain, and that the Dutch West Indies have followed these examples, by emancipating slaves under laws which went into operation in July, 1863. Note to Forty-third Edition. -The first edict for the gradual emancipation of slaves in Cuba was passed by the Cortes of Spain, June 23, 1870, and was communicated to the Captain General of Cuba, July 4, and proclaimed to all interested by Caballero de Rodas, on the 28th of September, 1870. |