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
But what shall we say of such men as Botts, Stuart, and Macfarland of
Virginia; of Raynor, Morehead, Miller, Stanly, Graves, and Graham of North
Carolina; of Davis and Hoffman of Maryland; of Blair and Benton of
Missouri; of the Marshalls of Kentucky; and of Etheridge of Tennessee? All
these gentlemen, and many others of the same school, entertain, we
believe, sentiments similar to those that were entertained by the immortal
Fathers of the Republic--that slavery is a great moral, social, civil,
and political evil, to be got rid of at the earliest practical period--and
if they do, in order to secure our votes, it is only necessary for them to
"have the courage of their opinions," to renounce slavery, and to come out
frankly, fairly and squarely, in favor of freedom. To neither of these
patriotic sons of the South, nor to any one of the class to which they
belong, would we give any offence whatever. In our strictures on the
criminality of pro-slavery demagogues we have had heretofore, and shall
have hereafter, no sort of reference to any respectable slaveholder--by
which we mean, any slaveholder who admits the injustice and inhumanity of
slavery, and who is not averse to the discussion of measures for its
speedy and total extinction. Such slaveholders are virtually on our side,
that is, on the side of the non-slaveholding whites, with whom they may
very properly be classified. On this point, once for all, we desire to be
distinctly understood; for it would be manifestly unjust not to
discriminate between the anti-slavery proprietor who owns slaves by the
law of entailment, and the pro-slavery proprietor who engages in the
traffic and becomes an aider and abettor of the institution from sheer
turpitude of heart; hence the propriety of this special disclaimer.
If we have a correct understanding of the positions which they assumed,
some of the gentlemen whose names are written above, gave, during the last
presidential campaign, ample evidence of their unswerving devotion to the
interests of the great majority of the people, the non-slaveholding
whites; and it is our unbiassed opinion that a more positive truth is no
where recorded in Holy Writ, than Kenneth Raynor uttered, when he said,
in substance, that the greatest good that could happen to this country
would be the complete overthrow of slave-driving democracy, _alias_ the
nigger party, which has for its head and front the Ritchies and Wises of
Virginia, and for its caudal termination the Butlers and Quatlebums of
South Carolina.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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