Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860 — John Shaqi
Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
History
Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860
Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
is no sooner set up in a slaveholding State than it is demolished,
and citizens who assemble peacefully to discuss even the extremest
claims of slavery, are at first cautioned, and, if that is
ineffectual, banished or slain, even more surely than the
resistants of military despotism in the French empire. Nor, except
just now, has the case been much better even in the free States.
It is only as of yesterday, when the free citizens, assembled to
discuss the exactions of the slaveholding class, were dispersed in
Boston, Utica, Philadelphia and New York. It is only as of
yesterday, that when I rose, on request of citizens of Michigan,
at Marshall, to speak of the great political questions of the day,
I was enjoined not to make disturbance or to give offence by
speaking of free soil, even on the ground which the Ordinance of
1787 had saved to freedom. It was only as of yesterday that
Protestant churches and theological seminaries, built on Puritan
foundations, vied with the organs of the slaveholding class in
denouncing a legislator who, in the act of making laws affecting
its interests, declared that all human laws ought to be conformed
to the standard of eternal justice. The day has not even yet
passed when the press, employed in the service of education and
morality, expurgates from the books which are put into the hands
of the young all reflections on slavery. The day yet lasts when
the flag of the United States flaunts defiance on the high seas
over cargoes of human merchandise. Nor is there an American
representative anywhere, in any of the four quarters of the globe,
that does not labor to suppress even there the discussion of
American slavery, lest it may possibly affect the safety of the
slaveholding class at home. If, in a generous burst of sympathy
with the struggling Protestant democracy of Europe, we bring off
the field one of their fallen champions, to condole with and
comfort him, we suddenly discern that the mere agitation of the
principles of freedom tend to alarm the slaveholding class, and we
cast him off again as a waif, not merely worthless, but dangerous
to ourselves. The natural and ancient order of things is reversed;
freedom has become subordinate, sectional and local; slavery, in
its influence and combinations, has become predominant, national
and general. Free, direct and manly utterance in the cause of
freedom, even in the free States themselves, leads to ostracism,
while superserviceability to the slaveholding class alone secures
preferment in the national councils. The descendants of Franklin,
and Hamilton, and Jay, and King, are unprized--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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