USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Woodbury > History of ancient Woodbury, Connecticut : from the first Indian dead in 1659 to 1872, Vol. II > Part 23
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" The reply of the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States was decisive. 'We will not,' they said, ' thus change the Constitution of our fathers. We will abide by it as it is.'
"' Then,' replied the slaveholders, ' we will dash this Union to
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pieces. From its fragments we will construct another, whose cor- ner-stone shall be slavery.'"
" It will be difficult for future generations to credit the barbar- ism into which slavery degraded the human heart in the South. In several of the Southern States, laws were enacted declaring that all the free colored people who did not leave the State within. a given time, should be sold into slavery. And how are these poor creatures, from Mississippi or Louisiana, to escape their aw- ful doom, the most awful that can befall a mortal,-slavery for themselves and their offspring, forever ? Here is a little family, perhaps a Christian family, with but a slight admixture of African blood in their veins. They are poor, friendless, uninstructed. They must run the gauntlet of the Slave States, Alabama, Geor- gia, the Carolinas, Virginia, where they are every moment liable to be arrested as fugitives, thrown into prison, and after being kept there for a few months, and no one appearing to claim them, they are to be sold as slaves, the proceeds of the sale to be cast into the public treasury. Can tyranny perpetrate a more atrocious crime ? And what is the excuse for this outrage so unparalleled in the legislation of Christendom ? It is simply that the enslaving of the free is necessary to enable the slaveholders to keep in sub- jection those already in bondage. In view of this execrable sys- tem of despotism, Thomas Jefferson says,-
"What an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself in vindication of his own liberty ; and the next moment be deaf to all those mo- tives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow man a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."
In order to secure a full equality, or balance of power, for the handful of slaveholders in the United States, Senator Hunter of Virginia demanded that there should be "two Presidents chosen, one by the slaveholding South, and the other by the North, and that no act should be valid unless approved by both Presidents. The number of slaveholders in the United States did not exceed three hundred thousand. The whole population of the country was about thirty millions. The whole population of the South was but about eight millions. Vast multitudes of these were poor whites, who could neither read nor write, and were in beggarly poverty. These ignorant creatures were almost entirely at the beck of the slaveholders. Thus this amendment to the constitu-
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tion was designed to give three hundred thousand slaveholders a veto upon all the acts of the General Government. In the further carrying out of this plan, he demanded that the United States Supreme Court should consist of ten members, five to be chosen by the little band of slaveholders, and the other half by the mill- ions of freemen."
The slaveholders also demanded that their slaves, who, feeling the inate desire for freedom planted in the human breast, escaped to the free air of the colder North, should be seized by the citi- zens of the North, who abhorred the institution, and returned to eternal bondage, a thousand times worse than death. They were to pursne them with the whole community, if necessary, that they might thus be returned to torture. Many sad instances of this occurred, harrowing the conscientious mind of the whole north. In the entire South no man with Northern thoughts of freedom, was safe for a moment, in life, or property. There was nothing so sacred that a slaveholder was bound to regard, if a fellow - citizen thought, in his inmost heart a word against the mon- strous demands of slavery. Stripes, lynching and death were the only reward for a free thought, in this regard.
" Future ages will find it almost impossible to believe that any enlightened man could be found, in America, to defend a system inevitably involving such atrocities. And yet it is a marvelous fact, that slavery found no more determined supporters than among the so-called Christian ministers of the South ; and the women surpassed the men in the bitter and unrelenting spirit with which they clung to the institution. Those facts which harrowed the soul of the North, seem to have excited not an emotion in the heart of the slaveholding Sonth. These Christian ministers took the ground, that Slavery was a divine institution. The Rev. Dr. Palmer, of New Orleans, one of the most distinguished of the Presbyterian clergymen of the South, declared it to be the espe- cial mission of the Southern churches, 'to preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic servitude, with the right, unchal- lenged by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and na- ture may carry it.'
" The professedly Christian minister who uttered these senti- ments, was familiar with all the atrocities of slavery. The slave shambles, where men, women and children were sold at auction, were ever open, almost beneath the shadow of his church spire. . ' Maidens, who had professed the name of Christ, and whose mark-
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et value depended upon their beauty, were sold to the highest bidder within sound of his church choir. Families were sold in the slave market of New Orleans, parents and children, husbands and wives separated, just as mercilessly as if they were sheep or or cows. And yet the Christianity of the South had become so degenerate, through the influence of slavery, that a Presbyterian minister, and sustained apparently by his whole church, represents the institution as one of divine approval, and one which it is the principal mission of the Sonthern church to maintain and extend."
The Hon. A. H. Stevens, of Georgia, vice-President of the Con- federacy, said, in a speech made at Savannah, March, 1861 :-
"The prevailing ideas entertained by Jefferson, and most of the leading Statesmen, at the time of the formation of the old Con- stitution, were, that the enslavement of the African was in viola- tion of the laws of nature : that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. Those ideas were, however, fundamen- tally wrong. Our new government is founded on exactly the op. posite idea. Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the Negro is not equal to the white man ; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural con- dition. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict con- formity with these laws. This stone, which was rejected by the first builders, . is become the chief-stone of the corner in our new edifice.' "
Such is a very imperfect statement of some of the prominent aspects and demands of the wicked institution of slavery. It poisoned the life blood of its supporters, and eradicated from their hearts every vestige of morality and religion. It not only did this for its advocates, but it demanded that the pure and untainted, the legions of the free North, should become the lovers and de- fenders of the hateful and baleful institution, and become more meanly the slaves of the aristocrats of this " curse of God," than the ignorant, "dirt-eating poor whites," and the chattels over whom they held supreme sway. Of course, educated, intelligent, conscientious men would not submit to this, and hence arose the inevitable conflict.
The celebrated writer, Rev. John S. C. Abbott. in discussing this subject, has so tersely summed up the remaining causes which made the rebellion inevitable, in his admirable " History of the Civil War in America," that it is here inserted, as being better
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than any account the author can furnish within the limits of this work :-
" By one of the compromises of the Constitution which slavery had exacted, and which, instead of being a compromise, was a bald concession, the slaves of the South, though deemed there merely as property, were allowed to be counted in the Congres- sional representation, five slaves being equivalent to three white men. Thus, John Jacob Astor, with a property of twenty mil- lions at the North, had but one vote. But the Southern planter had his property represented in Congress. The slaveholder, with 800 slaves, valued at less than one million, was equal in his repre- sentation in Congress to 480 free Northerners. He held in his own hand the votes of these 480 men, who, in his own view, and so far as the rights of freemen are concerned, were no more men than the horses and the oxen in Northern barns.
" The North felt the humiliation of this arrangement, and yet were not at all disposed to disturb it. They would abide by the Constitution. But they were unalterably resolved that such an arrangement should not extend any further. The practical opera- tion of this " compromise " was this. The six slaveholding Gulf States, by the census of 1860, contained 2,311,260 free white citi- zens. The single Free State of Ohio contained 2,339,599 citizens. And yet Ohio could send but eighteen representatives to Con- gress, while the slaveholders could send twenty-eight. In addi- tion to all this, the slaveholders of these States were represented by twelve Senators, while the free citizens of Ohio were repre- sented but by two. And yet the energies of freedom so infinitely surpass those of slavery, that the free North was perfectly willing to abide by these " compromises " of the Constitution, being fully conscious that, even with all these advantages in favor of slavery, freedom would eventnally win the day.
" The slaveholders were equally conscious of the fact. They saw the tide of free emigration rolling rapidly over the prairies of the West, and new States carved our with almost miraculous rapidity. It was evident that, under the natural workings of the Constitu- tion, the votes of freemen would soon entirely outnumber those of a privileged and aristocratic class, and therefore they resolved to dissolve the Union, break up the Constitution, and reconstruct the Government upon a basis which should continue the power they had so long exercised, in their own hands.
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" By the same census of 1860, the total population of the Free States and Territories was 21,816,952. The free white population . of the eleven States which soon raised the standard of rebellion, was 5,581,630. This was the trouble. Slavery had drifted into the minority. It was circumscribed and prohibited expansion by the votes of freemen. Under these circumstances the South would listen to no "compromise," which was not capitulation. They demanded the reorganization of the Government, upon a basis which would give slavery the preponderating power.
" Neither was it possible to permit them to depart. Five millions demanded that twenty-one millions should surrender to them the Capital at Washington, with all its historic associations and treas- ures. They demanded the mouths of the Mississippi, which the nation had purchased at a vast expense, that the boundless regions of the North West, where hundreds of millions must eventually dwell, might have free access to the ocean. They demanded all the forts on the Southern Atlantic coast, and in the Gulf of Mex- ico, forts essential to the protection of the ever increasing com- merce of the North. They demanded permission to drive, with the energies of fire and sword, all loyal men out of the border States of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and out of Western Vir- ginia, that those States might be forced to unite themselves with the Southern Confederacy. They demanded that slavery should be considered an equal partner with freedom, and that the Terri- tories of the United States, and the Navy, and the Treasury, should be divided equally between them. They demanded a treaty, by which we should return every slave who should escape to our free land. They avowed their intention of establishing free trade with foreign nations, by which they could draw all importa- tion to their ports, flood the land with goods smuggled across a frontier fifteen hundred miles in length, and render it almost im- possible to protect any domestic manufactures, or to collect by customs our national revenue.
" Never before in the history of this world, were demands made so exorbitant and so insolent. The slaveholder, accustomed to plantation manners, and regarding himself as the representative of chivalry, ever assumed on the floor of Congress the airs of a master, greatly to the disgust of all well-bred men.
"It was impossible to yield to either of his demands. More than twenty millions of people could not, at the dictation of five mil- lions, trample their free Constitution in the dust, and accept, in its
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stead, one framed by the slaveholder, based on the corner-stone of human bondage. Neither could such a nation, without self- degradation, without meriting the scorn of the world, surrender its Capital, half of its Territories, half of its Navy, its most im- portant harbors and fortifications, the months of its most majestic stream, which, with its tributaries, drains millions of square miles of free soil, and surrender hundreds of thousands of loyal citizens in the border States to pillage, violence, and exile. The demands of the slaveholders rendered peace impossible, upon any other terms than the unconditional capitulation of freedom to slavery.
"Let us, for a moment, contemplate more fully this demand of the slaveholders, that the United States should recognize them as a foreign power, and surrender to them the mouths of the Missis- sippi, that wonderful river, which, with its numberless tributaries, makes the great central basin of our continent the most attractive spot upon the globe. In 1763, the ancient province, called Loui- siana, was sold by France to Spain. Even then the sparse popu- lation of our great North West were intensely excited in view of the possibility of a foreign power being able to close the mouths of their noble river, and thus cut them off from all access to the sea.
" Napoleon, with the wonderful foresight which marked his gen- ius, seeking to establish colonies which would enable France to compete with her rival, England, in commercial greatness, pur- chased the regal colony in the year 1800. Immediately the ener- gies of the Napoleonic empire were developed upon these shores. This greatly increased the alarm of the thousands of settlers who were rearing their cabins upon the banks of those tributaries, whose only outlet was by the channel at New Orleans. The power of Napoleon was such, that no force America could use would avail to wrest these provinces from his grasp. His politi- cal wisdom and energy were such, that a vigorous empire would surely soon rise, spreading over all those fertile plains, extending from the right of the Mississippi to the ancient halls of the Mon- tezumas. And thus the boundless North West could only gain access to the commerce of the world, by bowing its flag suppli- catingly to a foreign power.
" In this crisis, when the fate of America was trembling in the balance, Providence interposed in our behalf. England, jealous of the greatness to which the arts of peace were elevating France, rudely broke the piece of Amiens, and renewed the war to crush
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Napoleon. England, with her Navy, omnipotent at sea, would have immediately seized upon this magnificent territory. To pro- tect it from the grasp of England, and to aid in building up a maratime power in the West, which might eventually prove a check upon the British fleet, Napoleon opened negotiations with America, for the sale of the whole province of Lonisiana, with boundaries then quite indefinitely settled. Mr. Monroe was sent to France, to conduct the negotiation in association with Chancel- lor Livingston, then our resident minister at the court of the Tu- illeries. The population of the United States was then but 5,000,000. And yet eagerly we made the purchase at $15,000,000, representing a burden upon the population equal to $90,000,000, at the present day.
" Thus we obtained, half a century ago, this majestic territory, equal in size to one half of Europe. Many States and Territories have already been carved from the acquisition. The tide of emi- gration is constantly and rapidly pouring into those fertile plains, washed by the upper tributaries of the Mississippi and the Mis- souri, and already there is a population there of 10,000,000. Be- fore the close of this century, this population will be doubled, probably trebled. The whole region between the Alleghanies and the Rocky mountains, that almost boundless valley, soon to teem with hundreds of millions, finds its only outlet to the sea through the mouths of the Mississippi, by the gates of New Orleans.
" And yet the slaveholders of the comparatively insignificant State of Louisiana, with a free white population of but 376,913, scarcely a third of that of the City of New York alone, and 70,000 of whose adults can neither read nor write, had the audacity to claim the right to secede from the Union, establish themselves as a foreign nation, and unfurl over the forts at the mouths of the Mississippi a foreign banner; which the millions dwelling in the great Mississippi bas in could only pass by the consent of her guns. The United States could, by no possibility, stoop to such dishonor. The Hon. Edward Everett, in the following words, has very for; cibly presented this question in its true light :-
" Louisiana, a fragment of this colonial empire, detached from its main portion, and first organized as a State, undertakes to se- cede from the Union, and thinks by so doing, she will be allowed, by the Government and people of the United States, to revoke this imperial transfer, to disregard this possession and occupation of sixty years, to repeal this law of nature and of God; and she
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fondly believes, that ten millions of the Free people of the Union will allow her and her seceding brethren to open and shut the portals of this mighty region at their pleasure. They may do so, and the swarming millions, which throng the course of these noble streams and their tributaries, may consent to exchange the char- ter, which they hold from the God of Heaven, for a bit of parch- ment signed at Montgomery or Richmond-but it will be when the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, which form the eastern and western walls of the imperial valley, shall sink to the level of of the sea, and the Mississippi and the Missouri flow back to their fountains."
Senator Douglas presented the folly of this pretended right of secession in a very forcible light, and with logic which no honest mind can resist.
" The President," said he, " has recommended that we should purchase Cuba. According to this doctrine of the right of seces- sion, we might pay $300,000,000 for Cuba, and then, the next day, Cuba might secede, and reannex herself to Spain !" Volumes could not more conclusively show the absurdity of such a notion.
The Presidential election drew nigh, when the question was to be decided, whether the Government of the United States was to be administered upon the principle of rendering all possible sup- port to the maintenance and extension of slavery, or whether the energies of the Government should lend all its constitutional sup- port to foster freedom. There were four candidates in the field. Mr. Lincoln, the republican candidate, was openly pledged to re- sist the extension of slavery. In emphatic utterance, which ex- ceedingly exasperated the slaveholders, he said :-
" The central idea in our political system at the beginning was, and until recently continued to be, the equality of men. In what I have done, I can not claim to have acted from any peculiar con- sideration for the colored people, as a separate and distinct class in the community, but from the simple conviction, that all the in- dividuals of that class are members of the community, and, in virtue of their manhood, entitled to every original right enjoyed by any other member. We feel, therefore, that all legal distinc- tions between individuals of the same community, founded in any such circumstances as color, origin, and the like. are hostile to the genius of our institutions, and incompatible with the true history of American liberty. Slavery and oppression must cease, or American liberty must perish. True democracy makes no inquiry
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about the color of the skin, or place of nativity, or any other sim- ilar circumstance of condition. I regard, therefore, the exclusion of the colored people, as a body, from the elective franchise, as incompatible with the true democratic principle."
While stating these as his political principles, he at the same time avowed that Congress had no constitutional right to inter- fere with slavery in those States where it existed, but that it was both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories.
John C. Breckenridge was the candidate of the slaveholders, pledged to administer the Government, in the most effectual way, to nurture and to give increasing political power to the institu- tion of slavery. There were two other candidates, Stephen A. Douglas, and John Bell, who were supported by those who wish- ed to effect some compromise, and who were ready, for the sake of avoiding civil war, to make very great concessions to the South.
" The Presidential election took place on the same day, the 6th of November, 1860, throughout all the United States. The polls were closed at sundown. The votes were counted by midnight ; and in seven hours, through the marvels of the Telegraph, the eventful result was flashed through the whole breadth of the land, excepting California, embracing points more than three thousand miles apart. The popular vote for Electors stood, 1,857,610 for Lincoln ; 1,365,976 for Douglas; 847,953 for Breckenridge, and 591,613 for Bell. This vote, according to the Constitution, gave seventeen States out of thirty-three for Lincoln ; eleven for Breck- inridge : three for Bell; and one, Missouri, with three-sevenths of New Jersey, for Douglass. Though Mr. Douglas had so many votes scattered throughout the United States, as in but one State he had a majority, they availed him nothing.
" The Electoral vote of each State, carefully sealed, is conveyed to Washington, and there, in the Hall of the House of Represent- atives, the members of the Senate being present, the votes are counted, and the remlt announced. At 10 o'clock in the morning of the 15th of February, 1861, Pennsylvania Avenue was throng- ed with crowds pressing towards the Capitol. It was a season of great excitement, for the day after the election it was perfectly known what the announcement would be ; and the slaveholders, molding the passions of the masses of the South at their will, had nttered many threats, that the announcement should not be made, . and that the Government should be broken up in a row, Wash-
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ington was a slaveholding city, in the midst of a slaveholding re- gion, and any number of desperadoes could be summoned there, at a few hours' notice, from Maryland and Virginia.
" James Buchanan, an intimidated old man, was then in the Pres- idential chair, having been placed there as the candidate of the slaveholders, and the nation could place but little reliance, in that crisis, upon his efficiency and reposed but little confidence in his patriotism. But, providentially, General Winfield Scott, the vet- eran and universally revered head of the American army, had drawn to. the Capital the batteries which won the field at Buena Vista. Their frowning guns, ready to sweep the streets, overawed the conspirators. At 12 o'clock, Mr. Pennington, Speaker of the House, called the House to order, when the Chaplain, Rev. Thomas Stockton, offered an impressive prayer, closing with the following words :-
" Bless the outgoing Administration. May it close its labors in peace, without further violence, and without any stain of blood. And we pray for the incoming Administration; that thy blessing may rest on the President elect, in his journey hitherward ; that thy good Providence may be around him day and night, guarding and guiding him at every step ; and we pray, that he may be peacefully and happily inaugarated, and afterwards, by pure, wise, and prudent counsels, that he may administer the Government in such a manner, as that thy name may be glorified, and the welfare of the people, in all their relations, be advanced, and that our ex- ample of civil and religious liberty may be followed in all the world."
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