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writers and speakers, to prove what nobody denies,—what, indeed, is perfectly notorious,-that at the time of the formation of the Federal Constitution nobody dreamed of the extension of slave territory, and very few, (hardly any, indeed, out of South Carolina and Georgia,) even of the extension of slavery, but that men generally were looking forward to its gradual and not very distant extinction. But then, it is equally true that nobody dreamed of the extension of territory at all, whether slave or free; and hence there is no provision for extension in the Constitution. And yet, since its adoption, the extent of our territory has been nearly tripled, and a considerable slice of the new portion, --more than one-fourth, and that the best for agricultural purposes, is now slave territory. And still the cry is, More! and that not merely at the South, but even louder at the North, where it is fast becoming general. Witness the following from the New York Times, (Weekly,) of May 14, 1853:

"The selection of Mr. Buchanan for St. James', and Mr. Soulé for the Escurial, if significant at all, signifies that the United States has an inextinguishable appetite for Cuba; a fact of which no evidence is wanted. Has it not infested all our diplomacy; prevailed in all our Presidential messages; been inexhaustibly expressed in Congress and by the press? The most conservative of us admit that the absorption of the island is only a question of time. The selection is utterly devoid of other meaning."

And the following from the Boston Journal, of May 23, 1853:

"Whether the administration will be slow to take offence at the folly of our Mexican neighbors remains to be seen; but an important movement is undoubtedly in contemplation. Sooner or later the limits of our territory must and will be extended further South. Its course is as plainly

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marked out as the path of the sun in heaven; but it is only blind enthusiasts, hot-headed politicians, and reckless demagogues, that would precipitate matters before the time. Enlightened Mexicans, like General Arista, foresee it, and wish for such a result; but the true course for us to adopt is to leave Mexico to herself. Her tyranny and anarchial rule will alienate the northern provinces, which will shake off her yoke, successively following the example of Texas, and become independent States. The people of the United States will emigrate thither and settle among them, carrying civilization, the love of republican liberty, and the ability of self-government; and when in this way they become regenerated, and fit to be admitted, they will drop like ripened fruit into the lap of the Union, becoming really valuable acquisitions."

As to the Sandwich Islands, it seems to be generally conceded that we are to have them during the present administration; probably, within the present year.

And this we call "manifest destiny." I rather refer it to the leadings of Providence, that

"Divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will ;”—

that leads us by a way we knew not, working out by our (often unconscious) agency his purposes of wisdom and love;

'From seeming evil still educing good,”

and carrying the world, slowly but surely, forward, to its final redemption.

And what are to be the consequences of all this to the negro?

First and foremost, increased value to his labor, and consequent kinder treatment from his master:

Then, a more rapid elevation in the scale of being:

And finally, a speedier exodus to the land of his fathers.

I say to the land of his fathers; for that in that direction lies his final exodus, I have no doubt. I do not believe, with Mr. Secretary Walker, that it is to be through Texas into Mexico. On the contrary, I believe that his mission is to civilize and Christianize his native Africa, and that therefore Providence frowns upon every attempt of his to form a free and independent community in this Western Hemisphere. Cuba may, perhaps, become eventually the home of the Quadroon; for with his Anglo-Saxon energy, and with just enough of African blood in his veins to make him proof against tropical diseases, he would be ádmirably adapted, in conjunction with the Anglo-Saxon, to develope the inexhaustible resources of that magnificent island. But, for the full-blooded negro there can be no home this side the water he must be again "ferried o'er the wave: Africa must be redeemed, and he only can work out its redemption.

NOTE 14.-SOUTHERN EMANCIPATORS.

Mrs. Stowe speaks of a class of slaveholders who may be appropriately designated by this title, and that there is such a class, is undoubtedly true; but she seems to think them numerous, and in this she is mistaken; they are but few, and of those few, the greater part are in the border slave States, principally in Northern Kentucky. These last look across the river, and contrast the rapid growth of Ohio with the comparatively slow growth of their own Commonwealth, and then jump to the conclusion that slavery is at the bottom of it. Now, undoubtedly, slavery is a cause of it, but if it is the only cause, how happens it that Georgia is one of the most flourishing States of the Union, and that her resources are developing with such giant stride as to have gained for her the cognomen of the "Empire State of the South?" How happens it, too, if slave labor is the only

kind of labor which exhausts the soil, that two-thirds of the improved land of the State of New York has become exhausted to such a degree that "fully to renovate it would cost at least an average of twelve dollars and a half per acre, or an aggregate of one hundred millions of dollars ?" (See Appendix, R.)

The truth is, slave labor in a border State is necessarily unprofitable, from the fact that it is constantly coming increasingly into competition with free labor, and that, in such a state of things, both operate to disadvantage. Such is now the condition of things in Kentucky: she is purchasing her redemption, and she is paying the price of it as she goes along. I say her redemption, for a community whose laborers are free, is better off, ceteris paribus, than one whose laborers are slaves. Meanwhile, she has no right,—no moral right, I mean,-to turn her slaves loose on the community: she is bound to take care of them, or to send them where they will be taken care of, till they become fit for freedom.

This is a consideration which seems to be entirely lost sight of by Southern Emancipators. I commend it to Cassius M. Clay, and his coadjutors: they are too impatient by half; they had a great deal better take things easy, and wait for the slow but sure operation of natural causes to place them on the vantage ground of the Ohio freeman. Any attempt to hurry matters will only make bad worse.

NOTE 15.-YANKEE OVERSEERS.

Mrs. Stowe has no good opinion of this class of persons, for she tells us (vol. ii. p. 316,) that they are "proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves." This is, no doubt, true; but it does not follow that they are, therefore, "renegade sons" (vol. ii. p. 15,) of New England. On the contrary, it

is because they are genuine Yankees, that they are so hard masters: they have been accustomed to see men do a day's work,--they have done it themselves, and they cannot understand how the negro can do only a half or a third of one.

I recollect the first time I saw Quashy at work in the field, I was struck with the lazy, listless manner in which he raised his hoe. It reminded me of the working-beam of the engine on the steamboat that I had just landed fromfifteen strokes a minute; but there was this difference, that whereas the working-beam kept steadily at it, Quashy, on the contrary, would stop about every five strokes and lean upon his hoe, and look around, apparently congratulating himself on the amount of work he had accomplished.

Mrs. Stowe may well call Quashy "shiftless." One of my father's hired men, who was with him seven years, did more work in that time than an average negro would do in his whole life. Nay, I myself have done more work in a day, and followed it up too, than I ever saw a negro do; and yet I was considered remarkably lazy with the plough or the hoe: certainly, I had no great liking for it, for my vocation did not seem to me to lie that way. Perhaps a similar reason was operating on Quashy.

NOTE 16.-CHARACTERS OF THE WORK.

I have remarked in the Introduction that the life of the work is in its characters. Certainly the author has a wonderful power of descriptive portrait-painting, and where she has an original to sit to her, she invariably succeeds. She can paint a New England old maid, or a Kentucky negro, to the life, for she is at home among them. Equally successful is she in sketching the Kentucky drover, for genuine specimens of these are to be seen occasionally on the Ohio

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