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 gentleman has spoken of the increase of the female slaves being
a part of the profit. It is admitted; but no great evil can be
averted, no good attained, without some inconvenience. It may be
questioned how far it is desirable to foster and encourage this
branch of profit. It is a practice, and an increasing practice, in
parts of Virginia, to rear slaves for market. How can an honorable
mind, a patriot, and a lover of his country, bear to see this Ancient
Dominion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism
of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand
menagerie, where men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for
the shambles? Is it better, is it not worse, than the slave
trade--that trade which enlisted the labor of the good and wise of
every creed, and every clime, to abolish it? The trader receives the
slave, a stranger in language, aspect, and manners, from the merchant
who has brought him from the interior. The ties of father, mother,
husband, and child, have all been rent in twain; before he receives
him, his soul has become callous. But here, Sir, individuals whom the
master has known from infancy, whom he has seen sporting in the
innocent gambols of childhood, who have been accustomed to look to
him for protection, he tears from the mother's arms and sells into a
strange country among strange people, subject to cruel taskmasters.
"He has attempted to justify slavery here, because it exists in
Africa, and has stated that it exists all over the world. Upon the
same principle, he could justify Mahometanism, with its plurality of
wives, petty wars for plunder, robbery, and murder, or any other of
the abominations and enormities of savage tribes. Does slavery exist
in any part of civilized Europe? No, Sir, in no part of it."
PEYTON RANDOLPH.
On the 20th of October, 1774, while Congress was in session in
Philadelphia, Peyton Randolph, President, the following resolution, among
others, was unanimously adopted:--
"That we will neither import nor purchase any slave imported after
the first day of December next; after which time we will wholly
discontinue the slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it
ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or
manufactures, to those who are concerned in it."
EDMUND RANDOLPH.
The Constitution of the United States contains the following provision:--
"No person held to service or labor in another State, under the laws
thereof, escaping to another, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or
labor may be due."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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