el before his master,
and hold up his hands with as much apparent submission, humility, and
adoration, as a man would have done before his Maker, while his master
with out-stretched rod stood over him. This, I thought, is slavery;
one man subjected to the will and power of another, and the laws
affording him no protection, and he has to beg pardon of man, because
he has offended man, (not the laws,) as if his master were a superior
and all powerful being. Yes, this is slavery, boasted American
slavery, without which, it is contended even here, that the union of
these States would be dissolved in a day, yes, even in an hour!
Humiliating thought, that we are bound together as States by the
chains of slavery! It cannot be--the blood and the tears of slavery
form no part of the cement of our Union--and it is hoped that by
falling on its bands they may never corrode and eat them asunder. We
who are opposed to and deplore the existence of slavery in our
country, are frequently asked, both in public and private, what have
you to do with slavery? It does not exist in your State; it does not
disturb you! Ah, sir, would to God it were so--that we had nothing to
do with slavery, nothing to fear from its power, or its action within
our own borders, that its name and its miseries were unknown to us.
But this is not our lot; we live upon its borders, and in hearing of
its cries; yet we are unwilling to acknowledge, that if we enter its
territories and violate its laws, that we should be punished at its
pleasure. We do not complain of this, though it might well be
considered just ground of complaint. It is our firesides, our rights,
our privileges, the safety of our friends, as well as the sovereignty
and independence of our State, that we are now called upon to protect
and defend. The slave interest has at this moment the whole power of
the country in its hands. It claims the President as a Northern man
with Southern feelings, thus making the Chief Magistrate the head of
an interest, or a party, and not of the country and the people at
large. It has the cabinet of the President, three members of which are
from the slave States, and one who wrote a book in favor of Southern
slavery, but which fell dead from the press, a book which I have seen,
in my own family, thrown musty upon the shelf. Here then is a decided
majority in favor of the slave interest. It has five out of nine
judges of the Supreme Court; here, also, is a majority from