The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet ItHelper, Hinton Rowan
History
The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It
Helper, Hinton Rowan
Slavery -- United States
The statesmen who are to abolish slavery in Kentucky, must be mainly and
independently constituted by the non-slaveholders of Kentucky; so in every
other slave State. Past experience has taught us the sheer folly of ever
expecting voluntary justice from the slaveholders. Their illicit
intercourse with "the mother of harlots" has been kept up so long, and
their whole natures have, in consequence, become so depraved, that there
is scarcely a spark of honor or magnanimity to be found amongst them. As
well might one expect to hear highwaymen clamoring for a universal
interdict against traveling, as to expect slaveholders to pass laws for
the abolition of slavery. Under all the circumstances, it is the duty of
the non-slaveholders to mark out an independent course for themselves, to
steer entirely clear of the oligarchy, and to utterly contemn and ignore
the many vile instruments of power, animate and inanimate, which have been
so freely and so effectually used for their enslavement. Now is the time
for them to assert their rights and liberties; never before was there such
an appropriate period to strike for Freedom in the South.
Had it not been for the better sense, the purer patriotism, and the more
practical justice of the non-slaveholders, the Middle States and New
England would still be groaning and groveling under the ponderous burden
of slavery; New-York would never have risen above the dishonorable level
of Virginia; Pennsylvania, trampled beneath the iron-heel of the black
code, would have remained the unprogressive parallel of Georgia;
Massachusetts would have continued till the present time, and Heaven only
knows how much longer, the contemptible coequal of South Carolina.
Succeeded by the happiest moral effects and the grandest physical results,
we have seen slavery crushed beneath the wisdom of the non-slaveholding
statesmen of the North; followed by corresponding influences and
achievements, many of us who have not yet passed the meridian of life, are
destined to see it equally crushed beneath the wisdom of the
non-slaveholding Statesmen of the South. With righteous indignation, we
enter our disclaimer against the base yet baseless admission that
Louisiana and Texas are incapable of producing as great statesmen as Rhode
Island and Connecticut. What has been done for New Jersey by the statesmen
of New Jersey, can be done for North Carolina by the statesmen of North
Carolina; the wisdom of the former State has abolished slavery; as sure as
the earth revolves on its axis, the wisdom of the latter will not do less.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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