Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Europe -- Description and travel
this would have served the purpose pretty well, and spared our blushes
for the model republic, if the slaveholders themselves would only
withhold their testimony to the truth of what we were willing to let
pass as fiction. But they are worse than Mrs. Stowe herself, and their
writings are getting to be quoted here quite extensively. The _Moniteur_
of to-day, and another widely-circulated journal that lies on my table,
both contain extracts from those extremely incendiary periodicals, _The
National Intelligencer_, of February 11, and _The N.O. Picayune_, of
February 17. The first gives an auctioneer's advertisement of the sale
of "a negro boy of eighteen years, a negro girl aged sixteen, three
horses, saddles, bridles, wheelbarrows," &c. Then follows an account of
the sale, which reads very much like the description, in the dramatic
_feuilletons_ here, of a famous scene in the _Case de l'Oncle Tom_, as
played at the _Ambigu Comique_. The second extract is the advertisement
of "our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. M.C.G.," who presents his "respects
to the inhabitants of O. and the neighbouring parishes," and "informs
them that he keeps a fine pack of dogs trained to catch negroes," &c. It
is painful to think that there are men in our country who will write,
and that there are others found to publish, such tales as these about
our peculiar institution. I put it to Mr. G., if he thinks it is
patriotic. As a "fellow-citizen," and in his private relations, G. may
be an estimable man, for aught I know, a Christian and a scholar, and an
ornament to the social circles of O. and the neighboring parishes. But
as an author, G. becomes public property, and a fair theme for
criticism; and in that capacity, I say G. is publishing the shame of his
country. I call him G., without the prefatory Mister, not from any
personal disrespect, much as I am grieved at his course as a writer, but
because he is now breveted for immortality, and goes down to posterity,
like other immortals, without titular prefix.' [Cheers.] Now, here is
where you get the true features of slavery. What is the reason that the
churches, as a general thing, are silent--that some of them are
apologists, and that some, in the extreme Southern States, actually
defend slavery, and say it is a good institution, and sanctioned by
Scripture? It is simply this--the overwhelming power of the slave
system; and whence comes that overwhelming power? It comes from its
great influence in the commercial world. [Hear!] Until the time that
cotton became so extensively an article of export, there was not a word
said in defence of slavery, as far as I know, in the United States. In
1818, the Presbyterian General Assembly passed resolutions unanimously
on the subject of slavery, to which this resolution is mildness itself;
and not a man could be found to say one word against it. But cotton
became a most valuable article of export. In one form and another, it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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