Part 26

Standing on the bent necks of an enslaved race, with four millions of human beings as the black marble Caryatides to support its power, the Slave Oligarchy erects itself into a lordly caste which brooks no opposition. But when I speak of Caste, I mean nothing truly polite; and when I speak of Oligarchy, I mean nothing truly aristocratic. As despotism is simply an abuse of monarchy, so Oligarchy is simply an abuse of aristocracy, unless it be that most vulgar of all, “aristocracy of the skin.” Derived from Slavery, and having the interests of Slavery always in mind, our Oligarchy must naturally take its character from this _five-headed_ wrong.

“Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”

All that is bad in Slavery, its audacity, its immorality, its cruelty, its robbery, its meanness, its ignorance, its barbarous disregard of human rights, and its barbarous disregard of every obligation, must all be reproduced in its representative. If the Oligarchy hesitates at nothing to serve its selfish ends, it simply acts in harmony with Slavery, from which it draws its life-blood. If in grasp of power it is like the hunchback Richard, if in falsehood it copies Iago, and if in character it is low as the brutish Caliban,

“Which any print of goodness will not take, Being capable of all ill,”--

ay, if in all these respects it surpasses its various prototypes,--if in steady baseness, in uniform brutality, and consummate wickedness it is without a peer, be not astonished, fellow-citizens, for it acts simply according to the original law of its birth and the inborn necessities of its being. With all these unprecedented qualities and aptitudes combined into one intense activity, it goes where it will and does what it pleases. The Pterodactyl of an early geological period, formed for all service and every element, with neck of bird, mouth of reptile, wing of bat, body of mammifer, and with hugest eye, so that it could seek its prey in the night,--such was the ancient and extinct kindred of this Oligarchy, which, like Milton’s fiend,

“O’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.”

The soul sickens in contemplating the acts of dishonest tyranny perpetrated by this lordly power. I cannot give their prolonged history now. But looking at the old Missouri Compromise, founded on the admission of Missouri as a Slave State, and in consideration thereof the Prohibition of Slavery in other outlying territory, and seeing how, after an acquiescence of thirty-four years, and the irreclaimable possession by Slavery of its especial share in the provisions of this Compromise, in violation of every obligation of honor, compact, and good neighborhood, and in contemptuous disregard of the outgushing sentiments of an aroused North, this time-honored Prohibition was overturned, and the vast region now known as Kansas and Nebraska opened to Slavery,--looking next at the juggling bill by which this was accomplished, declaring that its object was to leave the people “perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way,” and seeing how, in spite of these express words, the courageous settlers there were left a prey to invading hordes from Missouri, who, entering the Territory, organized a Usurpation which by positive law proceeded to fasten Slavery upon that beautiful soil, and to surround it with a code of death, so strict, that the famous bell which once swung in the steeple over the Hall of Independence at Philadelphia would be nothing but a nuisance in Kansas, while its immortal inscription, “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof,” would be an offence, and the sexton who rang the bell a criminal,--looking at the Lecompton Constitution, that masterpiece of wicked contrivance, by which this same people, in organizing a State, were fraudulently prevented from passing upon the question of Slavery, and seeing how the infamous counterfeit, though repudiated by the people, was openly adopted by the President, and by him corruptly urged upon Congress, with all the power of his Administration,--looking at these things, so recent and menacing, I feel how vain it is to expect truce or compromise with the Slave Oligarchy. Punic in faith, as in fear, no compact can bind it, while all interpretations of the Constitution friendly to Freedom, though sanctioned by Court and Congress in continuous precedent, are unceremoniously rejected. Faust, in the profound poem of Goethe, on being told that in Hell itself the laws prevail, says:--

“Now that I like: so, then, one may, in fact, Conclude a binding compact with you, gentry!”

To which Mephistopheles replies:--

“Whatever promise in our books finds entry We strictly carry into act.”

But no compact or promise binds our gentry, although entered again and again in their books.

According to a famous saying, Russia is a “despotism tempered by assassination”; but even the steel of Brutus, refulgent in the Capitol, without the supplementary fulfilment of the wish of Caligula, that all should have a single life, must fail to reach our despotism, which in numbers enjoys an immunity beyond any solitary tyrant. Surely, if the Oligarchy is to live yet longer, its badges should symbolize its peculiar despotism born of Slavery. The coin, seal, and flag must be changed. Let the eagle be removed, giving place to the foul vulture with vulgar beak and filthy claw,--how unlike that bird of Jove, with ample pinion, and those mighty pounces, holding the dread thunderbolt and better olive of peace!--and instead of these, let there be fetter and lash, borrowed from the plantation, which is the miniature of the broader plantation to which the Republic is reduced. That appearance may be according to reality, and that we may not seem what we are not, this at least must be done. Abandon, too, the stars and stripes,--the stars numbering the present Union, the stripes numbering that Union which gave to mankind the Declaration of Independence with immortal truth; and let these also be replaced by the universal fetter and lash, for here is typified our Oligarchy, in all present power, as in all vital principle. Fetter and lash! The schoolboy shall grow up honoring the chosen emblems; the citizen shall hail them with sympathetic pride; the Republic shall be known by them on coin, seal, and flag; while the ruler of the subjugated land, no longer President, shall be called Overseer.

* * * * *

Of course, fellow-citizens, you are now ready to see that the corruptions by which the present Administration is degraded are the natural offspring of slaveholding immorality. They have all concurred in sustaining the policy of the Oligarchy, and in the case of the Lecompton Constitution in direct effort to fasten Slavery upon a distant Territory, and they are all marked by the effrontery of Slavery. There is also its vulgarity; but this is natural; for is not pretension a fruitful source of vulgarity? and, pray, what is Slavery, but an enormous Pretension? Smollett attributes the peculiar profligacy of England at a particular period to the demoralization of the South Sea Bubble; but what is such a fugitive influence, compared with Slavery, which, indeed, if it were not a crime, might well be called a Bubble? A Government which vindicates the sale of human beings need not hesitate to purchase votes, whether at the polls or in Congress. The two transactions belong to the same family, though unquestionably the last is the least reprehensible.

* * * * *

Fellow-citizens,--And now we are brought to the practical bearing of this statement. Beyond all doubt your souls rise in judgment against these things. Beyond all doubt you are saddened at the shadow which they cast over the land. Beyond all doubt you are unwilling to bear any responsibility for their longer continuance. But this is not enough. There must be opposition, active, constant, perpetual; and this is the foremost duty of patriotism. From the virtuous Reformer, Wycliffe, whose name illumines the earlier period of English history, we learn that men are sharers in evil deeds who from “coward dumbness” fail to oppose them. There can be no such coward dumbness now. Happily, a political party is at hand whose purpose is to combine and direct all generous energies for the salvation of the country.

Would you arrest these terrible corruptions, and the disastrous influence from which they spring, involving nothing less than civilization on this continent, the Republican party tells you how, and, in telling you how, vindicates at once its Origin and its Necessity. The work must be done, and there is no other organization by which it can be done. A party with such an origin and such a necessity cannot be for a day, or for this election only. It cannot be less permanent than the hostile influence which it is formed to counteract. Therefore, just so long as the present false theories of Slavery prevail, whether concerning its character, morally, economically, and socially, or concerning its prerogatives under the Constitution, and just so long as the Slave Oligarchy, which is the sleepless and unhesitating agent of Slavery in all its pretensions, continues to exist as a political power, the Republican party must endure. If bad men conspire for Slavery, good men must combine for Freedom; nor can the Holy War be ended, until the Barbarism now dominant in the Republic is overthrown, and the Pagan power is driven from our Jerusalem. And when this triumph is won, securing the immediate object of our organization, the Republican party will not die, but, purified by long contest with Slavery, and filled with higher life, it will be lifted to yet other efforts for the good of man.

At present the work is plain before us. It is simply to elect our candidates: Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, whose ability, so conspicuously shown in his own State, attracted at once the admiration of the whole country, whose character no breath has touched, and whose heart is large enough to embrace the broad Republic and all its people,--him you will elect President; and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, whose clear head, firm principles, and ample experience none who sit with him in the Senate Chamber can contest,--him you will elect Vice-President. Electing these, we shall put the National Government, at least in its Executive department, openly and actively on the side of Freedom; and this alone will be of incalculable influence, not only in itself, but as harbinger of the Future.

First and foremost, we shall save the Territories from the five-headed Barbarism of Slavery, keeping them in their normal condition, as they came from the hand of God, free,--with Freedom written on the soil and engraved on the rock, while the winds whisper it in the trees, the rivers murmur it in their flow, and all Nature echoes it in joy unspeakable.

Next, we shall save the country and the age from that crying infamy, the Slave-Trade, whose opening anew, as now menaced, is but a logical consequence of the new theories of Slavery. If Slavery be the “blessing” it is vaunted, then must the Slave-Trade be beneficent, while they who ply it with fiercest activity take place among the missionaries and saints of humanity.

Next, we shall save the Constitution, at least within the sphere of Executive influence, from outrage and perversion; so that the President will no longer lend himself to that wildest pretension of the Slave Oligarchy, as Mr. Buchanan has done, declaring that Slavery is carried under the Constitution into all the Territories, and that it now exists in Kansas as firmly as in South Carolina. As out of nothing can come nothing, so out of the nothing in the Constitution on this subject can be derived no support for this inordinate pretension, which may be best dismissed in that classical similitude by which the ancients rebuked a groundless folly, when they called it _ass’s wool_, or something that does not exist, and plainly said to its author, _Asini lanas quæris_,--“You are in quest of ass’s wool!”[163]

Next, we shall help save the Declaration of Independence, now dishonored and disowned in its essential, life-giving truth,--_the Equality of Men_. This transcendent principle, which appears twice at the Creation, first, when God said, “Let us make man in our image,” and, secondly, in the Unity of the Race, then divinely established,--which appears again in the New Testament, when it was said, “God, that made the world and all things therein, hath made of one blood all nations of men,”--which appears again in the primal reason of the world, anterior to all institutions and laws,--belongs to those self-evident truths, sometimes called axioms, which no man can question without exposing to question his own intelligence or honesty. As well deny arithmetically that two and two make four, or deny geometrically that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, as deny the axiomatic, self-evident, beaming truth, that all men are equal. As of the sun in the heavens, blind is he who cannot perceive it. Of course, this principle, uttered in a Declaration of Rights, is applicable simply to rights; and it is a childish sophism to allege against it the obvious inequalities of form, character, and faculties. As axiom, it admits no exception; for it is the essence of an axiom, whether in geometry or in morals, to be universal. As abstract truth, it is also without exception, according to the essence of such truth. And, finally, as self-evident truth, so announced in the Declaration, it is without exception; for only such truth can be self-evident. Thus, whether axiom, abstract truth, or self-evident truth, it is always universal. In vindicating this principle, the Republican party have a grateful duty, to which they are moved by justice to a much-injured race, excluded from its protection, and by justice also to the Fathers, whose well-chosen words, fit foundation for empire, are turned into mockery. Nor can the madness of the Propagandists be better illustrated than in this assault on the Declaration of Independence, stultifying the Fathers for no other purpose than to clear the way for their five-headed abomination of _Compulsory Labor without Wages_.

And, finally, we shall help expel the Slave Oligarchy from all its seats of National power, driving it back within the States. This alone is worthy of every effort; for, until this is done, nothing else can be completely done. In vain you seek economy or purity in the National Government, in vain you seek improvement of rivers and harbors, in vain you seek homesteads on the public lands for actual settlers, in vain you seek reform in administration, in vain you seek dignity and peace in our foreign relations, with just sympathy for struggling Freedom everywhere, while this selfish and corrupt power holds the National purse and the National sword. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the door will be open to all generous principles. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the wickedness of the Fugitive Slave Bill will be expelled from the statute-book. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and Slavery will cease at once in the National Capital. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the Slave-Trade will no longer skulk along our coasts beneath the National flag. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and Liberty will become, in fact, as in law, the normal condition of all the National Territories. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the National Government will be at length divorced from Slavery. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the National star will be changed from Slavery to Freedom. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the North will be no longer the vassal of the South. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the North will be admitted to its just share in the trusts and honors of the Republic. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and a mighty victory of Peace will be won, whose influence on the Future of our country and of mankind no imagination can paint.

Prostrated, exposed, and permanently expelled from ill-gotten power, the Oligarchy will cease to exist as a political combination. Its final doom may be postponed, but it is certain. Languishing, it may live yet longer; but it will surely die. Yes, fellow-citizens, surely it will die, when, disappointed in purpose, driven back within the States, and constrained within these limits, it can no longer rule the Republic as a plantation of slaves at home, can no longer menace the Territories with five-headed device to compel _Labor without Wages_, can no longer fasten upon the Constitution an interpretation which makes merchandise of men and gives disgraceful immunity to brokers of human souls and butchers of human hearts, and can no longer grind flesh and blood, with groans and sighs, tears of mothers and cries of children, into the cement of a barbarous political power. Surely, then, in its retreat, smarting under the indignation of an aroused people and the concurring judgment of the civilized world, it must die,--it may be as a poisoned rat dies of rage in its hole.

Meanwhile all good omens are ours. The work cannot stop. Quickened by the triumph now so near, with a Republican President in power, State after State, quitting the condition of a Territory and spurning Slavery, will be welcomed into our Plural Unit, and, joining hands together, will become a belt of fire girt about the Slave States, within which Slavery must die,--or, happier still, joining hands together, they will become to the Slave States a zone of Freedom, radiant, like the ancient cestus of Beauty, with transforming power.

It only remains that we speed these good influences. Others may dwell on the Past as secure; but to my mind, under the laws of a beneficent God, _the Future also is secure_,--on the single condition that we press forward in the work with heart and soul, forgetting self, turning from all temptations of the hour, and, intent only on the cause,

“With mean complacence ne’er betray our trust, Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.”[164]

OUR CANDIDATES WILL BE ELECTED.

LETTER TO THE LINCOLN AND HAMLIN CLUB OF OWEGO, NEW YORK, JULY 30, 1860.

BOSTON, July 30, 1860.

DEAR SIR,--It is still uncertain whether my engagements here and elsewhere will allow me to visit Tioga County during the present season. But I beg to assure the Republicans there of my sympathy in their generous labors.

There is ample reward simply in working for a good cause; but we have before us, also, the assurance that our candidates will be elected.

Accept my thanks for the honor of your invitation, and believe me, dear Sir,

With much respect,

Faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

ISAAC S. CATLIN, Esq.

EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES A BLESSING, AND NOT A FAILURE.

LETTER TO A PUBLIC MEETING AT FRAMINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, JULY 30, 1860.

BOSTON, July 30, 1860.

MY DEAR SIR,--If I forego the opportunity which you offer me of uniting with the earnest Abolitionists of Massachusetts in celebrating the anniversary of Emancipation in the British Islands of the West Indies, I pray you not to believe me insensible to the magnanimous teachings of that day,--destined, I doubt not, as men advance in virtue, to take its place yet more and more among the great days of History.

Nothing shows the desperate mendacity of the partisans of Slavery more than the unfounded persistence with which they call this act “a failure.” If it be a failure, then is virtue a failure, then is justice a failure, then is humanity a failure, then is God himself a failure; for virtue, justice, humanity, and God himself are all represented in this act.

Well-proved facts vindicate completely the policy of Emancipation, even if it were not commanded by the simplest rules of morality. All testimony, whether from official documents or from travellers, shows, beyond question, that in these islands the condition of the negro is improved by emancipation; but this testimony is especially instructive, when we learn that the improvement is most strongly manifest in those who have been born in Freedom. Ask any person familiar with these islands,--as I have often done,--or consult any unprejudiced authority, and such will be the answer. This alone is enough to vindicate the act. Moreover, it is enough, if _men_ are raised in the scale of being, even though sugar perishes from the earth.

But careful statistics attest that the material interests of these possessions share the improvement of the population. In some of the islands, as in Barbadoes and Antigua, the advance is conspicuous, while in Jamaica itself, which is the instance most constantly cited of “failure,” the evidence is unanswerable, that the derangement of affairs cannot be charged upon Emancipation, but is a natural incident to the anomalous condition of that island throughout its history, aggravated by insane pretensions of the Slave-Masters. Two different Governors of this island[165] have assured me, that, with all their experience there, they looked upon Emancipation as a “blessing.” Thus is it shown that the true policy of this world is found in justice. Nothing is truer than that injustice, beside its essential wickedness, is folly also. The unjust man is a fool.

Only recently important testimony on this subject has found place, where it would be hardly expected, in the columns of the “New York Times”; and similar testimony occurs in other quarters, both in England and America. And yet, with the truth flashing in their faces, our Slave-Masters misrepresent the sublime and beautiful act as a “failure”! This, however, is of a piece with their whole conduct.

Let me thank you for the invitation with which you have honored me, and for the good wishes with which you cheer me; and believe me, my dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

SLAVERY A BARBAROUS DISEASE TO BE STAYED.

LETTER TO A REPUBLICAN MEETING AT THE DEDICATION OF THE REPUBLICAN WIGWAM IN NEW YORK, AUGUST 6, 1860.

BOSTON, August 6, 1860.

GENTLEMEN,--Accept my thanks for the invitation with which you have honored me. Knowing by recent experience something of the generous Republicans of New York, it is with reluctance that I renounce the opportunity you give me of mingling with them on an interesting occasion.

As citizens of a great metropolis, they have duties of peculiar difficulty. It is in these centres that the Proslavery sentiment of the North shows itself with violence often kindred to that of the plantation, so as almost to justify the language of Jefferson, who called great cities “sores” of the body politic.[166] Even this expression does not seem too strong, when we recognize the infection of Slavery breaking out sometimes in the violence of mobs, and constantly manifest in the press, in public speech, and in a corrupt public sentiment. It belongs to the Republican party, by gentle, healing influences, guided by a firm hand, to inaugurate the work of _cure_, that health may be substituted for disease.