UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GENERAL LIBRARY ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN 7.27.53 FIVE YEARS' PROGRESS OF THE SLAVE POWER. No. I. MEANING OF THE NAME. THE name Slave Power signifies that control in and over the government of the United States which is exercised by a comparatively small number of persons, distinguished from the other twenty millions of free citizens, and bound together in a common interest, by being owners of slaves. The scheme and forms of the government of the United States are republican. The people, having secured by the war of Independence the right to construct their institutions, set about constructing them in such a manner as to guarantee to every citizen the largest amount of liberty consistent with the welfare of other citizens. The fruit of the deliberations of their wise men whom they intrusted in the first instance with the work was the Constitution of a federal republic, which Constitution, after diligent examination, they ratified and adopted. It had been framed with full consideration of those imperfections through which other governments had proved either inadequate to the true object of government, or short-lived. And the purpose was so to frame it, and the hope was that it had been so framed, with the fit distribution of powers, and with the needful checks and balances, as to afford to the people of the United States a durable enjoyment of republican liberty, the only kind of liberty which they recognized. But the spirit of governments changes under influences inherent in the mind and in the condition of man, and constantly at work. Sometimes the forms change with or after it, and sometimes the forms remain. Rome, under the Cæsars, was an absolute monarchy. But in name it was still a republic. The old machinery went on, like a mill grinding chaff. The Senate still sat. There were still consuls, censors, quæstors, and tribunes. The difference was, that the Emperor (or general, for such was the meaning of the modest name) was himself consul, censor, quæstor, and tribune, and that, on peril of fortune and life, the Senate had to register his will. On the other hand, the republican spirit may force its way into the administration of a monarchy. The English government is of that denomination. But the majority of the people's House determines who the ministry shall be at any given time; and for all the great purposes of administration, the ministry is, for the time being, the king. Holland began as a republic, and from that changed by degrees, first into an aristocracy, and thence into a monarchy. The republic of Venice became an aristocracy, and under that name had a government as arbitrary, jealous, and cruel as any that history records. This tendency is no newly discovered thing. The founders of our institutions understood it as well as we. They thought of it much more, and to more purpose. Read the debates in the Convention for forming the Constitution, or the Federalist, or Mr. Adams's Defence of the American Constitutions, and see how it exercised their minds. With great sagacity and knowledge, they discerned and estimated the devices by which, in times past, the people had been made instruments for the subversion of their own liberties, and with careful and wise forecast they attempted to provide the needful securities against a repetition of the cheat and ruin. But less time than the life of man has passed, and already an aristocracy has come in and established itself, under the forms, but actually in the place, of their republic, from a quarter they did not dream of. We are not dealing in phrases when we say this. We are stating what future history will comment on as the great fact of the age in these United States. We say distinctly, and with profound and sorrowful conviction, that, under the forms of our federal republic, an aristocracy has been rapidly growing up, and vigorously fortifying itself. There was one element of danger to which history had not called the attention of the fathers of our republic, -one germ of an aristocracy which they did not sufficiently consider, or, at any rate, against which, believing its existence to be only temporary, they did not sufficiently provide. In their Constitution, they forbade an establishment of religion, and the granting of titles of nobility. These were express and efficient precautions against such an aristocracy as that of the British House of Peers. But the protection they were intended to give was too restricted for the exigency. A power may be safely said to be supreme, and to be entitled (if that were of any consequence) to give its name to the government, when it is able to have every thing its own way; and that, we say, is the position which the Slave Power is swiftly ap proaching, and has all but definitely attained, in this country. And we hold, that, if the three millions of free voters set any value upon the freedom bequeathed to them by their fathers, and the securities which alone can keep it for their posterity, they have no time to lose in emancipating themselves from the ambitious power which otherwise will presently have them helpless at its feet. Emancipating themselves; for the question of the day is not whether slavery shall be abolished in the Slave States, but whether slavery shall abolish freedom in all the States. The number of slaveholders in the United States is not precisely known. There is scarcely a question belonging to the census of equal importance. But Congress, that is, the Slave Power in Congress, has never allowed it to have a place in the census. The Roman Senate would never consent that slaves should be distinguished by a peculiar dress, lest they should know their great number and consequent power. So the slaveholders understand what a blow to their power it would be, should they permit their small number to appear in figures. The whole number of slaveholders in the United States, including men, women, and minor children, it is thought may somewhat exceed one hundred thousand.* A hundred thousand, for the number of slaveholding voters, is unquestionably a large estimate. This seems a small number of persons to govern a country in which there are three millions of other persons who have the same right to vote as the slaveholder himself, and the vote of every one of whom (with an exception only for the peculiar basis of slave representation) has as much weight as his own. How is it done? By precisely the methods through which, from the beginning of time, free governments have been over and over again converted into despotisms, whether of the aristocratical or monarchical type. The more one has read of political history, the better he understands how the thing has been repeatedly carried through in past time, and how it will be repeatedly attempted in future. If any one would see a crowd of illustrations of it within a narrow compass, let him consult Mr. Adams's "Defence of the American Constitutions." Does it seem to any one "impossible that a hundred thousand voters should govern three millions"? No assertion could possibly be more unfounded than the assertion of such an impossibility. No assertion could show greater ignorance of political tendencies, and of the resources of ambitious men and classes. It is just this ignorance, and just this presumption of power and safety, of which ambitious men and classes have, over and over again, * The last "Annual Report of the American and Foreign Antislavery Society" estimates it at one hundred and thirteen thousand. terms. availed themselves to accomplish their objects. It is true that separate the two classes, and the physical force would be with the three millions, and not with the one hundred thousand. But what is that to the purpose? Every arbitrary government is a government exercised by one or a few, over many; that is, a government in which the greater physical power is controlled by the less. There is not in the world, there never was, a despotism resting upon force alone. It is a contradiction in Pharaoh, or Czar, or Council of Forty, the one or the few, when they govern and grind the many, have to do it, not by the strong hand, but by the cunning head. Influence and contrivance on the part of the governors, servility and selfishness on the part of the smaller portion of the governed, and indifference, stupidity, and want of mutual understanding among the larger portion, these are and have been universally the elements of arbitrary rule. And when one has said that, one has explained in general terms how the Slave Power, an aristocracy of a hundred thousand voters, governs the United States of America, just as much as how any other aristocratic body Conscript Fathers, States General, Council of Ten, or Polish Diet has borne rule anywhere else. The hundred thousand slaveholders, more or less, are scattered through fifteen States, giving an average of six or seven thousand to each. They are the property-holders. Substantially, they own those States. They own the land and improvements in them as much as the nobles and gentry of England own the land and improvements of England, and a great deal more. Nearly monopolizing the property of those States, they, to a great extent, monopolize the knowledge. Their money enables them to command an education in youth, and, in mature years, the leisure and means for further study. The Southern nonslaveholding white has not money to buy an education, and the public does not provide it for him. Partly from the policy of keeping him ignorant for the purposes of the slaveholder, partly from the essential difficulties of instituting common schools in a country cut up into large tracts for plantations, the common school system does not exist in the Slave States. The nonslaveholding white grows up ignorant, and continues so. And with ignorance come its natural companions, shiftlessness, poverty, love of low vices, want of self-respect, servility. In 1840, according to the census of that year, more than one free white person in nine in North Carolina was unable so much as to read and write. In 1838, Governor Campbell of Virginia told his legislature that of 4,614 men, applicants for marriage licenses, 1,047 could not write their names. Give a set of men all the property and knowledge in a community, and they already have, or soon will have, all the power, In It is impossible for a republic to exist in fact, whatever be the name, where there is not a general distribution of property, and a general enjoyment of the means of education. That happens in the Slave States which could not but happen under such circumstances. The slaveholders, being the possessors of the property and the knowledge, are also the office-holders. such a division of castes, that trust naturally falls to them ; their advantages, fortified still further in each case by the mutual aid which their common interest in a common object dictates, enable them to secure their position; and in point of fact, they divide among them the public offices of their respective States. Politically they, the small slaveholding class, represent their respective States. Those States know no other rulers. This is the first step. By force of the same reasons, slaveholders, with extremely rare exceptions, and those exceptions consisting of such as have obtained their places by the favor of slaveholders, are the only persons who come from the Slave States into the Federal Congress. The representation in the two Houses from Slave States-fifteen States out of thirty-one is always a compact body, going together for all the claims and supposed interests of the Slave Power. However divided into parties upon other questions, on this they always agree. The English House of Peers is not so jealous of its prerogatives as the Senators and Representatives from fifteen States of this Union are of the prerogatives of Slavery. To extend and perpetuate Slavery, -for other purposes, no doubt, but eminently for the purpose of constituting themselves, by means of it, the supreme power in the nation, of taking actual possession of the government, and monopolizing to themselves and their partisans its administration, its honor, and its rewards, - this is the perpetual aim of their pertinacious, skilful, unscrupulous, sleepless policy. With great weight in the House of Representatives, still the Senate, in which body the Slave States have a strength of their own of thirty votes out of sixty-two, and by which body (in concurrence with the President) the most important patronage of the government is dispensed, is the stronghold of the Slave Power. Of course, as a general thing, the men most likely to be thought of as Cabinet Ministers, Foreign Ministers, Judges of the Supreme Court, and so on, are the most eminent men in their respective vicinities and States, and the most capable of influencing public opinion within their spheres. But how can men who desire such places venture to defy the displeasure of thirty voters out of sixty-two in the appointing body? Rather, how immense is the influence exerted from this source to bring the highest minds of those who are candidates for office in all parts of the country into the traces of the Slave Power, and make them its instruments to bring into the toils of that power |