A voice from the South: comprising letters from Georgia to Massachusetts, and to the southern states. With an appendix containing an article from the Charleston Mercury on the Wilmot Proviso ...

Appendix

CONTAINING AN ARTICLE FROM THE CHARLESTON MERCURY ON THE WILMOT PROVISO, TOGE- THER WITH THE FOURTH ARTICLE OF THE CONSTITUTION, THE LAW OF CONGRESS, THE NULLIFICATION LAW OF PENNSYLVANIA, THE RESOLUTIONS OF TEN OF THE FREE STATES, THE RESOLUTIONS OF VIRGINIA, GEORGIA AND ALABAMA, AND MR. CALHOUN'S RE- SOLUTIONS IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

BALTIMORE:

SAMUEL E. SMITH, PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER,

No. 1 SUN BUILDINGS,

S. E. CORNER BALTIMORE AND GAY STREETS. 1847.

WILL THE SOUTH SUSTAIN A LITERARY JOURNAL?

TIE WESTERN CONTINENT

A POPULAR SOUTHERN FAMILY NEWSPAPER,

NEUTRAL IN POLITICS AND RELIGION.

At a time when nearly every publication that emanates from the northern press — liternry, religious and political — is impregnated with sentiments hostile to the interests, and intuiting to the feelings of the people of the South, — when the enemies of Southern Institutions are organizing for a bold and formidable invasion of Southern Rights, and when professed Abolition papers are sustained within our borders by contributions from Northern Societies, — when the most important political issues of the day, are being merged in that of Abolitionism, — the vital necessity of at least one popular medium, in which Southern views may be uttered, and Southern interests vindicated, free from the bias of political or sectarian prejudice, must be apparent to all.

With a view to supply such a journal, the Western Continent has been established in Baltimore. This position wasselected as being the furthest Southern point which offered the necessary facilities for a successful competition with the large weeklies e-f the Northern cities. The success of the paper thus far has abundantly attested the correctness of our views, and we feel that is only necessary to make the Continent known to the public to whose interest it is devoted, to secure for it a general circulation.

The Western Continent is a paper of the largest size, printed on good paper and_with fair type, and in all the characteisrtics of a

POPULAR FAMILY JOURNAL

Will compare favorably with the best weeklies of the country. It has been the aim of the editors to preserve a high moral tone, and to maintain an elevated standard of literary excellence, giving to its contents such varied character as to interest and instruct all minds, and please all tastes.

THE CURRENT NEWS OF THE DAY— Foreign and Domestic, is carefully compiled for the Continent, special pains being taken to comprehend every thing of interest to the Southern reader.

TALES, SKETCHES, ESSAYS AND POEMS— Original and Selected, of the highest merit, will always be found in the colums of the Continent, it being our fixed determination to admit none others.

THE LADIES' DEPARTMENT— With a view to make this department useful and entertaining to our Lady readers, we have secured the aid of an accomplished and talented vouko lady of this city, who will preside over the columns devoted to their interests.

MAJOR JONES edits the Humorous Department, in which will be fonnd, every week, original stories and sketches from his pen and from his numerous correspondents, as well as his choicest selections from various sources, with his comments on matters and things in general.

DOMBEY AND SON. — This popular work, justly" classed among the ablest productions of Mr. Dickens, is given in entire parts immediately on its arrival in this country.

Our close proximity to the great Political, Commercial and Literary Emporiums of the country, enables us to disseminate the LATEST INTELLIGENCE on all subjects as promptly as any of our northern cotemporaries ; and as our paper is as large, cheap, and we trust as good, we feel that we have at least an equal claim with the worthiest of them to the patronage of the Southern Public, to whose peculiar interests our Journal is especially devoted. Determined to do all in our power to merit their patronage, it is most respectfully solicited. Address, post-paid,

W. T. THOMPSON, Editor.

Single copy of the Continent one year, $2 — Three copies, $5 — Seven copies, $10 — Twelve copies, $15 — Seventeen copies, #20.

A VOICE FROM THE SOUTH.

A

VOICE FROM THE SOUTH :

COMPRISING

THE SOUTHERN STATES.

APPENDIX

CONTAINING AN ARTICLE FROM THE CHARLESTON' MERCURY ON THE WILMOT PROVISO, TOGE-

THER WITH THE FOURTH ARTICLE OF THE CONSTITUTION, THE LAW OF CONGRESS,

THE NULLIFICATION LAW OF PENNSYLVANIA, THE RESOLUTIONS OF

TEN OF THE FREE STATES, THE RESOLUTIONS OF VIRGINIA,

GEORGIA AND ALABAMA, AND MR. CALHOUN'S RE-

SOLUTIONS IN THE SENATE OF THE

UNITED STATES.

BALTIMORE

WESTERN CONTINENT PRESS.

Introduction

The interest with which the following letters have been generally read, and the claims of the South, to a fair hearing at the bar of public opinion, upon the all-exciting subject of Slavery, have induced us to place them in a permanent form. We think they will commend themselves to every candid and impartial reader, both as to their style and matter. We do not profess to be an impartial judge of their merits, Southern as we are in all our feelings ; but we hardly think we are so far biased by our prejudices, as to misjudge when we say, that most readers will rise from the perusal of this pamphlet more favorably disposed towards Georgia than Massachusetts.

In order to a proper appreciation of these letters, the reader must remember that the Author speaks throughout, in the character of a Sovereign State, which had long been abused by the Abolitionists, and which had received some persona] aggressions from Massachusetts, in regard to her Slave property and other things . as indeed had Virginia, South Carolina, and Louisiana. Massachusetts may well be considered the mother of Abolitionism ; indeed her State Abolition Society lays claim to this honor for her; and no one will dispute it with her. She has been the most restless agitator upon this subject by far, of any State in the Union.

But a few years back, a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a citizen of Georgia, and one of the most holy, zealous Christians belonging to that Church, and distinguished for the extent and the success of his labors among the Blacks, married a lady who owned Slaves, which upon his marriage he made over to her. At the next General Conference of that Church, he was arraigned for this act by the Abolitionists, and by a vote of the Anti-Slaveholders, he was required to desist from his official duties until he should absolve himself from his connection with Slavery. This produced a division of that Church; thirteen Annual Conferences and about five hundred thousand members, moving off from the old, and forming a new Ecclesiastical connection. About the same time a split occurred in the Baptist Church, by reason of plain encroachments of the rights of Southern members, on the ground of Slavery. In the mean time, Congress had been harassed at

6 INTRODUCTION.

every Session with numberless petitions — of which Mr. Adams was usually made the conduit-pipe — upon the subject of Slavery, over which every body who is not wilfully blind knows Congress has no authority. At length came the Wilmot Proviso, a copy of which is appended to these letters. About the time that it was in progress, we wrote to the Author of Georgia's Letters, informing him among other things, of the stand which we had taken upon the subject of Abolitionism, and of the alarming extent to which it was growing, and of which we knew the people of Georgia were generally profoundly ignorant; for Abolition papers are excluded from that State by statute. This brought him out in the character and in the defence of Georgia. This character he sustains throughout, and of course he speaks with the independence and severity of a Sovereign State long trampled upon and insulted by one that w-as but an equal to say the least of it.

Georgia's position would have justified even the most intemperate recrimination, in addressing Massachusetts — for Massachusetts was the chief agent in fastening Slavery upon her ; and if this fact, as one of the British Reviews says, does not justify a Slave State in supporting Slavery, it certainly justifies her in looking for courtesy from those who fastened the institution upon her, and in demanding silence from them, until they will point out some practicable mode of getting rid of it. No such mode does any of them point out — nothing like courtesy does she receive from any of them. She has a right to demand of all the Free States, whose Slaves have been sold at the South, that they shall each at fair prices purchase back as many as they sold, with their proportionate increase, before they abuse her and complot her ruin, by endeavoring to hem in the whites and blacks until they cannot live on the same territory. This openly avowed purpose, is monstrous— shocking . and when we consider that it was actually in a course of experiment by the Wilmot Proviso when Georgia took the pen, we will rather wonder at her temperance and self-command than at her severity. She is the greatest cotton growing State in the Union, and to her Cotton is Massachusetts mainly indebted for what she is worth. If she would return to Georgia all that she has made by manufacturing her produce and carrying it to market, and trading with her, with interest on it, Georgia would this day be able to buy Massachusetts, and yet have enough to live on. We are ourselves, to a certain extent, protectionists, and we do not believe that GeoTgia has suffered as much by that system, as she thinks she has; but in reading these letters, we must remember what Georgia thinks, and has ever thought. Her opinl on has ever been that the constantly descending price of her great staple is owing to the tariff; and if this be true, she has lost millions annually for thirty years by the very policy which has built up Massachusetts. This, all must accord to her; thai she has asked nothing but to be let alone in the management of her own concerns. Now, with these views, to find herself abused by Massachusetts, and the Northern States making common cause with Massachusetts against her, and in their attacks unsettling the very foundations of the Government, was well calculated to drive her to desperation ; and every candid reader will, as we have intimated, rather admire her equanimity, than condemn her severity, cuttingtand excoriating as some ill' her remarks are. We think her vindication of herself complete ; and that when the storms of Abolitionism shall have blown over, or overset the Republic, history will not place her below Massachusetts, in anything that constitutes the real worth of a nation.

INTRODUCTION. 7

It was not the original intention of Georgia, to have done more than to have vindicated herself from the attacks of the Abolitionists, and to have compared her - self with Massachusetts, in those traits of character which distinguish them aa members of one family ; but upon learning that her letters would be pamphleted, (and perhaps upon our request to extend them,) she determined to make her defence more complete ; and to extend it to the many false rumors and impressions which were current in the world in regard to Slavery, and its effects upon Southern character.

If these letters affect others as they have us, we think Georgia has laid the Southern States under lasting obligations to her. The force of them lies in this : that they are true to the letter ; and will be found so upon the strictest examination of impartial history.

This way of bringing the States in comparison with each other, is well cul~ culated to have a fine moral effect upon the States themselves, as it will teach them to be careful how, for a time-serving purpose, they depart from the line of rectitude. Georgia says in one of her letters to us ; " I am obnoxious to some pretty severe raps for my own past conduct, which I suppose I shall get. Well, let them come ; they will teach me better for the future ; and teach others, that in the end, the strait course is always the best course. What I have said, however, will be found true, viz : that my faults have been such as affect no body but myself; those of Massachusetts have been obtrusive, contagious, and I fear are likely to become mortal to the body politic. I thought the time had come for some one to speak in defence of the South, if her sons did not intend to be fibbed out of their character as well as choused of their rights."

In another letter Georgia says : " Writing under a sense of wrongs, long continued and unprovoked — and in full view of the dangers which threaten the country from these wrongs, and with the branding-iron of Abolitionism still upon me, (hear them talk of " Southern Intolerance!") I find that I have been frequently betrayed into feelings too warm, and expressions too harsh." Accordingly, upon learning that these letters were to be put in the present form, Georgia has softened some of the severer passages in them. We think she need not have been so scrupulous, for surely the South has borne enough, and long enough, to weary the patience of Job himself. It is a singular fact, that even complaint of Abolition encroachment on the part of any son of the South, is called " Southern Intolerance ;" and we are given to understand, that even this will not be allowed by the North* Truly we have fallen upon strange times !

For the information of the Southern public, we have added, as a valuable Appendix to these Letters, the article from the Charleston Mercury of the 11th August, in which the aggressive and revolutionary tendency of the Wilmot Proviso is most ably set forth by the editor. The Appendix also contains article 4, section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing the Rights of the South ; the Law of Congress of 1793, giving Protection to the Slave Property of the South ; the Law of Pennsylvania in effect nullifying that Law of Congress, and in open violation of the spirit of the Constitution; the Wilmot Proviso, with the Resolutions of the States of Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Ohio, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Maine, in favor of its provisions; the Resolutions of the Democratic Conventions of Virginia* Georgia and Alabama ; and Mr. Calhoun's Resolutions in the Senate.

Editor Western Continent,

GEORGIA TO MASSACHUSETTS.

LETTER I Dear Sister Mass

Read this letter, attentively, patiently, and candidly ; and when you shall have read it, place it among your archives, where History may find it, when Abolitionism, of which you are the mother, and the chief supporter, shall have accomplished its now undisguised purpose. In addressing you, I shall endeavor to observe the respect due to an elder sister ; but, at the same time, I must guard you against confounding truths which prove you to be entitled to no respect at all, with a breach of courtesy! Certainly, after the unsparing and unprovoked abuse which you have heaped upon me and my neighboring sisters for many years, I might be pardoned for the most bitter recriminations ; but if I were not deterred from them by self-respect, and the dread that I have of being thought like you in any respect, I should certainly forbear them now that I am about to give to the world so much of your history as involves my interests, and the points of difference between us ; for if you be not invulnerable, this will inflict a wound upon you, deep enough, and painful enough, to appease even malignity itself; and I am sure I have not a particle of that in my composition. It will irritate you, I know, sister Mass. — what that comes from the South does not ? But to this I am indifferent ; not because I delight »n provocation, but because it will give you some little apology for w T rath which you have enkindled without cause, and cherished without excuse, for many long years. Some things that I have to say to you will be equally applicable to your neighbors, who have imbibed your principles. To such I have a caution, but no apology to offer : the caution is, that they avoid the common fault of proselytes, which is to take to themselves an over-share of the disgrace which may attach to their new faith, in the belief that this will entitle them to an over-share of its honors.

When I first settled in this country, as you may remember, I proclaimed to the world that I intended to have nothing to do with Slavery ; and I adhered steadfastly to my resolution, until it was overpowered by the complaints of my children. They compared my situation with my sister's on the other side of the Savannah. 1 was gaining but a bare subsistence, they said, by the labor of my children, while she was growing rich by the labor of slaves. Her sons were sent over to England, to receive a liberal education, while mine were kept constantly employed delving for bread in my unhealthy lowlands, or nursing silk- worms on my arid barrens. They censured my squeamishness in regard to Slavery, and pointed to all the other sisters of the family, especially to you and sister Penny, who made great pretensions to piety, as entertaining no scruples upon that subject. Indeed, the prevailing opinion /of the whole family at that time was, that it was a mercy to the African race to

JO LETTER FROM

bring thorn, even as slaves, from the miseries of their own country, to this. Urged by these considerations, and many others, and finding myself unsupported by a single member of the family in my opposition to Slavery, I at length yielded a reluctant consent to the introduction of slaves into my domain. My consent was no sooner obtained than you and mother Britannia filled my ports, my fields, and my houses, with these unfortunate beings — Slaves, " kidnapped" at their parents' doors, by " man-stealers,"invery truth, carrying your blood and our mother's blood in their veins; but not a drop of mine. Man stealers, who are verily complimented by the name, as you would readily admit, had you seen them, as I have seen them, coming into port with an escort of sharks, and landing their cargoes of naked, starving, sick, and dead, and dying human beings, from the most infernal fetid pits that man ever lived in or ever died in. I have often seen my children weep over these wretched victims of Yankee avarice, while yours drove their trades, with all that same selfsufficiency, pertness, humor and disgusting suppleness, which marks the character of your Pedlars at the present day. I have known these miserable wretches, when just from the hands of the Britton and the Yankee, to dispute with the vultures for the half devoured carcass that lay by the highway, and with difficulty restrained from feeding upon the loathsome mass of putrescence. Indeed the first care of the purchaser from the slave-ship used to be, to prevent them from killing themselves by surfeit.

For the part which my sons took in these shocking scenes, God may, for aught I know, have judgments in reserve for me ; but I cannot believe that he will ever use you as the instrument for executing them. That my children, in purchasing slaves from yours, delivered them from the most cruel bondage that man ever groaned under, is most true — that there was pity and compassion on the side of the purchasers, and none on the side of the venders, is equally true ; hut for these things I give them no credit, because selfishness and not humanity urged them to the traffic. But if they be guilty, they who never owned a slave ship or sailed on board of one — they who never enslaved a freeman — they to whom the slave rushed with joy from the cruelties of your sons — they who would not look into the floating dungeons, from which your boys daily drew their famished dead, for many long weeks — in mercy's name, where do you stand? Of all the sisterhood, you should be the first to sympathize with me and the last to upbraid me. But you are the fileleader in this modern crusade upon Southern rights ; and the end of it will be just what might be expected from such a leader in such a cause — trouble to us both, but a thousand times more trouble to you than to me. Laugh at the prediction if you please — but bear it in mind, the result of your movements ivill he more disastrous to you and your allies, than to me and mine. Why, I thus judge, will be disclosed in the sequel, when I shall return to this subject. As a proper introduction to it, let us pursue your history in order.

You and mother Brit, having "put the price of human flesh in your pockets," went ofT glorying in your profits — leaving me to manage this flesh as I could. In process of time, the Old Lady grew weary of making money by the slow process of traffic with her daughters ; and she determined to get it in a more summary way — by virtue of her authority. Accordingly she issued her orders that we should all be taxed. This was a direct approach to the seat of 'your sensibilities, and of course you became desperate. You called upon us all to unite with you in resisting her exactions. The other sisters responded promptly to the call ; but what was * to do ? I was very young, and very weak. Father Oglethorpe had with "/fficulty saved my life from the Spanish sword. My mother had for a long time, as I have intimated, kept me poor, by confining me to the silk business, instead of letting me choose my own occupation. I was surrounded by Indian tribes, numerous and warlike. Your importations of " flesh and blood" had by this time increased upon me to rather an alarming extent — and of course 1 was in no situation to throw off parental authority and meet the inevitable consequences. Withal, I was just beginning to gain health and strength. My affairs were intrusted to the supervision of James Wright, a most amiable, excellent, prudent man, who left me no ground of complaint. As for the tax, it did not hurt me : for the plain reason that I had little or nothing to be taxed. As for tea, not one in a hundred of my children ever used it; and most of them, I believe, had never seen it. To espouse your cause under these circumstances, was, it seemed to me, to sacrifice everything' and to gain nothing'. And yet to stand by and see you flogged into submission, to unrighteous exactions, was abhorrent to every principle of my nature. I did what j r ou never do — I sacrificed interest to principle and juined you — I sa}' I joined you : for you were the only one of the family who had come to blows with our mother. The rest of us were foolishly hoping for a compromise ; but you took the better course. Convinced of the justness of your cause, you resisted oppression at its first approach ; and you did well, as the event clearly proved. In cases of doubtful right, compromises are excellent things ; but where there is flagrant injustice, cruelty and extortion on the one hand, and clear right on the other, a compromise is no better than a reward to iniquity for its daring, and a promise to double the premium at short payment, when it becomes doubly villainous. He is a fool, or a suicide, or both, who tries to appease the bloodhound by giving him a lap of his blood ; and man bereft of every moral sense, is but a bloodhound with human sagacity. You did right, therefore, sister Mass, in resisting oppression in limine, though it seemed a desperate adventure at the time. My support of you, ruined me for a time.

We conquered, and having severed the connexion with our unnatural parent, we were now all, by common consent, at liberty to manage our own affairs in our own way. Not one of the sisters dreamed that she had any right to intermeddle with the domestic concerns of another. Withal, these were days of decency and courtesy, which protected each from the intrusions of another. That such was the general understanding at that time, was proved beyond question by the fact, that when the social compact was formed, two of the sisters refused for a time to unite in it ; and during this time they were considered by all as entirely independent of the rest. This was " the Government of the People,'" as we learn from high judicial authority, which three millions could not enforce upon four hundred and sixty thousand, and which eleven communities could not enforce upon two! I beg you to remember these things for future uses. Absolved from maternal authority, we agreed to band together for the common defence and general welfare. To this end we drew up articles of confederation, in which we confided to deputies chosen by us all, the management of our foreign relations, and such matters as were of general interest ; while we reserved to ourselves individually the entire management of our local concerns. It was in settling these articles that you and I divided for the first time ; and as we have never agreed since, I beg leave to submit to the judgment of the world the points of difference between us, with the course of us both in our opposition. You were for clothing the Deputies with powers to force us to a perpetual union, and to revise, if not to direct, all our household movements. You supposed there would be a perpetual tendency in the sisterhood to fly from each other, and you would have made the Deputies " lohippcrs in" to us. Indeed, I think I would hazard nothing in saying, that you would gladly have adopted the Old Lady's system of government which we had just thrown off. Nor have I a scruple of blame to attach to you on this account. They were strange views, to be sure, under the circumstances, and in point of consistency, in perfect keeping with your views ever since ; but then they were sincere, and therefore they received from me the most liberal indulgence — an indulgence whicn I would gladly have repeated, had you afforded me an opportunity like favorable, within the last fifty years.

On the other hand, I believed that the ties of friendship, kindred, and common interest would keep us together in love and harmony, without the aid of a driver's thong — our children intermingling and intermarrying, I could not conceive how we were ever to fall out. Nor could I see, nor can I yet see, the propriety of keeping any sister in the family, who might wish to leave it. My dread was of the Deputies. Power I knew to be self-sustaining and self-increasing. All history had proved this. My plan, therefore, was to clothe the Deputies with just power enough to discharge the trust confided to them, and no more. My plan prevailed ; and one would suppose — or rather, one would have supposed, that you possessed modesty enough to await the decisions of experience, upon the questions of differences between you, and a large majority of the family. Not you, however. That your judgment was not considered authoritative, seems to have been considered an ample apology to yourself, at least, for laying aside all modesty, all courtesy, all decency, and all consistency, when you stept into the confederacy. As you could not have the articles cut to your pattern, you determined to stretch them to it ; and accordingly you have been for sixty years, engaged in the singular employment of fitting your rejected suit to the Deputies, and then abusing them most unmercifully, f -r wearing it — or to speak without a figure — you have ever been laboring to increase the powers of the Deputies, by construction ; and yet ever complaining, most bitterly, of their abuse of power. Counting out Washingtok's administration, about which there is a sanctity, which none of us dare invade, you have quarrelled with every other save one ; and that one every body else quarrelled with. It was but recently your son John cried out, " we have been under slave domination for forty years:" and yet, you are as ripe for increasing that power as ever you were. And here lies the secret of your desperate abolition efforts. That you have not half the sympathy for the slave that I have, I will prove to the satisfaction of every unprejudiced mind. I could excuse your zeal in behalf of freedom, if yon had wit enough to conceal its true object. But so palpably does selfishness — a yearning for the loaves and fishes, evince itself, in all your mock philanthrophy, that to credit you for the virtue which you feign, would be to discredit myself for common sense. But let me not anticipate.

The confederation established, we all got along pretty well. Your children came in great numbers to my domain, and I received them kindly. I did not like their ways in all respects— they were too forward, too tricky, and too covetous ; but as these w^re hereditary faults, that I knew would soon wear away in this latitude, and as they possessed some redeeming virtues, I gave them a hearty welcome. They tarried with me, married into my family, and raised a numerous progeny, who now carry in their veins the blood of us both. Let me impress this fact upon your memory, as it has an important connection with what I have yet to say.