Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 1 (of 2)Curtis, George Ticknor
History
Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 1 (of 2)
Curtis, George Ticknor
Buchanan, James, 1791-1868
The subsequent fate of this measure can be related very briefly. Mr.
Anderson died at Carthagena, on his way to the isthmus of Panama. The
“Congress” adjourned to meet at Tacuboya, a village near the city of
Mexico. Mr. Poinsett was appointed in the place of Mr. Anderson, and
Mr. Sargeant sailed for Vera Cruz on the 2d of December, 1826. He
arrived in Mexico in January, 1827, and found a few fragments of the
“Congress” floating about, without action or organization. Bolivar,
who was supposed to have originated the project, had changed his mind.
Mr. Sargeant remained for six months in Mexico, and in the summer of
1827 returned home.
Footnote 22:
This allusion to Mr. Everett requires some explanation. On the 9th of
March, 1826, he made a speech on the proposed Constitutional
Amendment, in the course of which he said:
“I am not one of those citizens of the North who think it immoral and
irreligious to join in putting down a servile insurrection at the
South. I am no soldier, my habits and education are very un-military;
but there is no cause in which I would sooner buckle a knapsack to my
back, and put a musket on my shoulder, than that. I would cede the
whole continent to any one who would take it—to England, to France, to
Spain; I would see it sunk in the bottom of the ocean, before I would
see any part of this fair America converted into a Continental Hayti,
by that awful process of bloodshed and desolation, by which alone such
a catastrophe could be brought on. The great relation of servitude, in
some form or other, with greater or less departures from the theoretic
equality of man, is inseparable from our nature. I know no way by
which the form of this servitude shall be fixed, but by political
institution. Domestic slavery, though, I confess, not that form of
servitude which seems to be most beneficial to the master—certainly
not that which is most beneficial to the servant—is not, in my
judgment, to be set down as an immoral and irreligious relation. I
cannot admit that Religion has but one voice to the slave, and that
this voice is, ‘Rise against your master.’ No, Sir, the New Testament
says, ‘Slaves obey your masters,’ and though I know full well that, in
the benignant operations of Christianity, which gathered master and
slave around the same communion table, this unfortunate institution
disappeared in Europe, yet I cannot admit that, while it subsists, and
where it subsists, its duties are not pre-supposed and sanctioned by
religion. I certainly am not called upon to meet the charges brought
against this institution, yet truth obliges me to say a word more on
the subject. I know the condition of the working classes in other
countries, and I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the
slaves of this country are better clothed and fed, and less hardly
worked, than the peasantry of some of the most prosperous States of
the continent of Europe.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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