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THE SOUTHERN CORNER-STONE.

who best know their own motives, tell us this. One of the most honest and intelligent among them, selected as their Vice-President,-Alexander H. Stephens,-speaking for them before a vast audience at Savannah, a few days after his election, publicly said,

66

Negro slavery was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the rock upon which the old Union would split."

These possessions have caused one rebellion. Shall they remain in the hands of the insurgents to cause another? Can they remain in such hands without a certainty of that very result? In other words, can we reconstruct the Republic half free and half slave, yet preserve, under the operation of these conflicting laborsystems, permanent peace? Let us take a practical view of this.

Alexander H. Stephens, adverting, in the address already quoted from, to slavery, as having been regarded by the leading Revolutionary statesmen to be wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically," says, "This stone, which was rejected by the first builders, is become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice." And he adds, "Slavery is the natural and moral [normal?] condition of the negro. This our new government is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral

truth."'*

This is the creed, self-expounded by its advocates, which is professed by the Southern slaveholder. cede its truth, and South Carolina's Declaration of Independence† is a document stamped with forecast, and

* Address of Alexander H. Stephens, already quoted. See Putnam's Rebellion Record, vol. i., Documents, p. 45.

"Declaration of Causes which induced the Secession of South Caro

SLAVERY MAINTAINERS WISE IN THEIR GENERATION. 165 entitled to commendation. Whoever drafted it ran out his premises to their logical results. The convention that adopted it saw their way before them, and did not, like their weak sympathizers in the North, expect incompatibilities.

Having set up their "great philosophical truth," the corner-stone of their political system, they saw clearly that they must insure it respect, that they must protect it from attack or condemnation; and they perceived that this could not be done if they maintained fellowship with the North. "The non-slaveholding States," they declare, "have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery." This, from citizens of the same Republic, they cannot permit; nor, except by secession from the non-slaveholding States, can they prevent it. hope of remedy,"-thus their Declaration concludes, "all hope of remedy is rendered vain by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief."

"All

Wise, in their generation, were South Carolina and the States that followed her lead! Building their system of government upon a "great philosophical and moral truth," which (unfortunately, they will say) the rest of the civilized world still regards as a flagrant moral falsehood, they can maintain the stability of their political edifice only by debarring all questions, all discussions, that might assault and endanger its foundations. As in despotic monarchies it was found necessary to declare it to be treason, punishable as a capital offence, to question the right divine of kings, so in a slave empire they see it to be indispensable to forbid, on pain

lina," adopted Dec. 21, 1860. See Putnam's Rebellion Record, vol. I., Documents, pp. 3, 4.

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MAINTENANCE OF SLAVERY AND

of death, all opinions touching the sinfulness, or inconsistency with religion, of slavery. Twenty-five years ago, they declared, from their places in Congress, that, in spite of the Federal Government, every abolitionist they caught should die a felon's death.* It was no idle menace, as numerous murders for opinion's sake, committed in the South before the war, terribly attest.

Let us not blame the men, except it be for seeking to uphold the monstrous system handed down to them by their forefathers. They must resist the Federal authority to maintain that system. They must violate the constitutional provision which forbids to abridge "the liberty of speech or of the press:" self-defence and its necessities compel them. They found this necessary before the war, in order to save slavery from destruction: the necessity will be increased beyond measure if slavery remain after its close. Now that the Presi dent's Proclamation of Emancipation has stirred up, in every Southern plantation, the latent longing for freedom, the dangers to their slave-system from propagandism will be increased a hundredfold.

It follows that in this Republic, if reconstructed half slave, half free, no man known to be opposed in principle to slavery will be able to cross Mason and Dixon's line without imminent risk of life. South of that line the constitutional provision touching the liberty of speech and of the press will remain inoperative. A felon's death will await every resident or traveller in

"Let an abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina, if we can catch him, we will try him, and notwithstanding all the interference of all the governments on earth, including the Federal Government, we will hang him."-Senator Preston, in debate in United States Senate, January, 1838.

"If chance throw an abolitionist in our way, he may expect a felon's death."-Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, in United States Senate,

1836.

OF THE CONSTITUTION INCOMPATIBLE.

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the South who prints or who utters, in public or in private, any denial that slavery is just and moral, any assertion that religion does not sanction it. The Constitution guarantees the right thus to print, thus to speak. The Federal Government is bound to maintain that constitutional right. But it cannot maintain it in a Republic half slave, half free. What then? Slavery and the Constitution inviolate cannot coexist. We must give up the one or the other.*

* Events have occurred among us here in the North, which, if it be painful, it is also useful, to recall, seeing that they serve as beacons to mark the dangers of the path we have been pursuing, and the incompatibility of slavery and free speech. Such an one was the burning, by a mob, twenty-eight years ago, in a free State, of a public building devoted to free discussion.

Pennsylvania Hall, a handsome public edifice situated in Sixth Street, near Cherry, Philadelphia, costing upwards of forty thousand dollars, was opened, before a respectable audience of three thousand persons, of whom the majority were ladies, on the 14th of May, 1838,-the managers announcing that it was dedicated to "free discussion of the principles of liberty and equality of civil rights." It continued open four days only, to crowded audiences throughout, the subjects discussed being slavery, the rights of the Indian, temperance, and requited labor. On the evening of the fourth day the building was destroyed.

I take the account of this act of vandalism from an official source,-the "Report of the Committee on Police," read in Councils July 5, 1838 (Philadelphia, L. R. Bailey, 1838).

On the evening of the third day, May 16, while Angelina Grimke Weld was speaking, the "house was assaulted by a ruthless mob, who broke the windows, alarmed the women, and disturbed the meeting by yelling, stamping, and throwing brickbats and other missiles through the windows." (Report, pp. 15, 16.) No persons were arrested, "as an attempt to carry ́away the prisoners might lead to a successful rescue."

May 17th, the managers called upon the Mayor (John Swift) to "protect them and their property in the exercise of their constitutional right peaceably to assemble and discuss any subject of general interest." The Mayor (p. 17) said, "He could give them no assurance, if they persisted in their evening meetings, that the police was able to afford them adequate protection;" but "he would do all in his power."

In the evening before the meeting, he went up to the building, found a

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CAUSES FOR SECESSION MUST REMAIN

But if we abandon the inviolability of the Constitution, if we attempt to perpetuate a state of things under which one of the most important provisions of the organic law which binds us together as a nation is habitually and openly outraged, if we surrender one of those sacred privileges to maintain which freemen first settled America,-a privilege the possession of which, more than of any one human right, distinguishes the citizen of a constitutional government from the subject of a despotism, a privilege which, beyond all others, is indispensable to human progress itself,—if we basely consent to such humiliation, can our Republic maintain either the respect of the world without or

crowd and a man haranguing them against the abolitionists, entered the Hall, and advised the managers not to hold their meeting. To this they assented, and the keys of the building were given up to the police. The Mayor returned home.

Later in the evening news was brought to him that an attack had commenced on the Hall. He collected a body of police and marched to the spot, "where the work of destruction was in rapid progress." He exclaimed to the crowd, "Is there nobody here to support the law?" But the only response was an assault on the police (p. 23). Two or three resolute men, who entered the building to protect it, were seized and ejected; the furniture was piled up and set on fire, and the crowd "directed the fire-engines -not to play upon the Hall, or else their engines and hose would be destroyed" (p. 24). The building, with all it contained, was burned to the ground.

The feature in this case which indicates most strongly the dangerous influence of a perverted public opinion, is the feeble and apologetic tone in which the Report from which I have been quoting condemns the act. It speaks of Philadelphia as "having been selected as the rallying-point of men known among us only as restless agitators" (p. 14), and winds up thus:-" However excusable the excitement might be, it can never be tolerated without jeoparding our dearest rights" (p. 27).

All the details of the proceedings within the Hall, during its brief existence, showing that the speakers proposed reform through constitutional means only, by "the ballot-box and petition,"-together with a full account of its destruction, will be found in a small volume entitled the “History of Pennsylvania Hall,” Philadelphia, Merrihew & Gunn, 1838.