Petition and memorial of David Quinn, asking for the re-establishment of Negro slavery in the United StatesQuinn, David, active 1850-1869
History
Petition and memorial of David Quinn, asking for the re-establishment of Negro slavery in the United States
Quinn, David, active 1850-1869
Slavery -- United States -- Justification
Why, then, have you destroyed negro slavery? and I particularly
use the word negro, for no white blood should ever be held in such
bondage. Are you madmen, or knaves sacrificing your country for party
ends, or have you dropped from the high mentalities of your fathers
down to a generation of fools?
Spite is a fierce motive power in the human mind, and when it breaks
forth from a long pent up fountain, it comes forth with terrific
power. So, we fear, has it been in our time. The tory, who fell
with Lord North in 1776, rose again with Abraham Lincoln in 1860;
and writhing under the stings of long defeat, found no bounds to his
vengeance. He therefore, in the consummation of his “irrepressible
conflict,” wanted “a little blood.”
But let us not be misunderstood or inappropriate in the application
of names to conditions.
The tory has a character by which he may be known under all
disguises, as effectually as the ass was known by his bray when
clothed in the skin of the lion. He is generally a worshiper of
money, and to get it and hold it to himself and his children forever,
to keep the rich rich, and the poor poor, or, in his own language, to
steady the ship of state, he seeks a _centralization_ of power in a
_congress_ or in a _crown_.
He is the man who sees all national perfections abroad, and all
imperfections at home; the man who tells you that “England did so
and so”—that England abolished slavery—that England has a great
national debt—that England has a subjugated Ireland, and that we,
of necessity, to be great must be just like England. These points
alone mark the tory. He is a centralizationist and British in his
proclivities. But he has other stripes, ear-marks, and croppings
by which he may be known. He is the man who governs by fraud or
force, who sees wisdom in deception, and honesty as a twin sister
of ignorance, and vulgar life—he is often artfully pious; but runs
the nation wildly into debt, converts its property into national
bonds, then steals them or divides them with his friends without
the least compunction of conscience, but is shockingly horrified
if some one happens to say repudiation, or, no more high tariffs,
stamp duties, or excise taxes. He is often exceedingly reverential,
but very forgetful when new desires conflict with old obligations.
He goes into a Know-nothing lodge, swears immortal hatred to all
foreigners, and particularly to that division of our species whom he
has politely styled “the d—d Dutch,” and also in the same obligation
swears unchanging fidelity to his native brother, but, on the next
day, joins in a crusade with these very identical “d—d Dutch” to
murder and destroy those very men whom, on the day preceding, he as
arduously swore ever to defend and never to desert.
He is the man who steals the goods, and then diverts attention by
crying “stop thief!”—the man who has revolutionized our government,
without incurring the responsibility of a rebellion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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