Senator Henderson, Of Missouri, made an excellent speech on Thursday last in support of the President’s emancipation resolution. After deprecating the disposition of some of the anti-slavery Senators to judge the border State men uncharitably, and expressing his belief that the various emancipation schemes introduced into Congress – especially Senator Sumner’s felo de se resolutions – were calculated to exasperate the Southern people and to prolong the struggle, he never the less sustained the President’s plan without qualification. He denied that it contained a threat of violent emancipation if the Border States refused to sell their slaves, such as radicals of both extremes professed to find in it, and [said:]
“This terrible revolution was brought about by Mr. Yancey and his confederates, by inflaming the Southern mind against the dangers of abolition, which they knew to be false. The drove the South to madness, to self-destruction; and in the letter of Messers. Yancey, Rost and Mann to Lord John Russell, they have erected a monument of infamy to these conspirators. They say, what all must now admit, that it was from no fear that slaves would be liberated that secession took place. The very party in power has proposed to guaranty slavery forever in the States of the South would but remain in the Union. Mr. Lincoln’s message proposes no freedom to the slave, but announces subjection of his owner to the will of the Union – in other words, to the will of the North. Even after the battle of Bull Run both branches of Congress at Washington passed resolutions that the war is only waged in order to enforce that (pro-slavery) constitution, and uphold the laws, (many of them pro-slavery,) and out of the hundred and seventy-two votes in the lower house, they received all but two, in the Senate all but one. As the army commenced its march, the commanding general issued an order that no slaves should be received into or allowed to follow the camp. Now, sir, what has been the result of this unnecessary strife upon my State. – In 1860 our slave population was 114,965, and although we stood as a peninsula in the great ocean of freesoil around us, I hazard the assertion to-day that no property was more secure in the State than slave property. It was so regarded by everybody. Our white population at the same period was upward of one million. – How is it now? I doubt whether there are fifty thousand slaves in the State. The secessionists charged that the brigade commanded by the Senator from Kansas, sitting near me, seized their slaves, and took them out of the State, and in order to retaliate, they as I learn, have taken hundreds of Union men in the state, to be delivered over to their injured friends. – In addition to this, many of the largest slave holders of the state, fearing the result of the war in the earlier stages of the rebellion hurried off their slaves to the South. Others again, waiting until they were surrounded by hostile armies, abandoned negroes and everything else for the protection of themselves, their wives and children.
“The true value of real and personal property in Missouri was in 1860, $501,214,398. Aside from the depreciation of value which no man can now estimate, and beyond the loss of slaves to which I have referred, I think it is safe to say that ten percentum of this vast amount of property has been destroyed and forever lost to the owners in consequence of this war – an amount equal to the aggregate value of all slaves in the state at the commencement of hostilities. If I were to add to this the loss occasioned to the people of the State by the utter prostration of its agricultural, commercial and manufacturing interests for the last twelve months, I might add fifty millions more to the sum already named. Looking, then, to my own State, and I speak for it alone, I am not disposed to take issue with the President in regard to the future results of the war. I regard his expression as a prophecy, and not as a threat – a prophecy that I feel will be realized if this war continues. That it shall continue until the Union be restored, I have already expressed my wish in the amendment offered. Whether you adopt it or not, the great West will never be content until every mile of the Mississippi river from Anthony’s Falls to the Gulf of Mexico shall be under the jurisdiction of our government. Let the question be settled now. But the President negatives, positively negatives the construction given in the following language: ‘Such a proposition on the part of the general government sets up no claim or right by the Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested. It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them.’
“In this view of the matter, sir, I am perfectly willing that the proposition go before the people of my State, without at present expressing an opinion as to what course they should pursue. It is a new pledge of faith by the representatives of the people that this vexed question shall be left with the people of each state. It comes not in the spirit of arrogance demanding conformity with the views of theirs, but with humility, acknowledging if slavery be an evil, it is a sin for which we are all responsible, and for the removal of which we are willing to come with practical benevolence. It means more than all this. It intimates to the States that the nation would prefer gradual to immediate emancipation, and that the measures no pending in congress looking to such results should be suppressed by one of conciliation and good will. If this spirit had been more largely cultivated in days gone by, we would not this day be forced to witness a ruined South and a deeply depressed North. Why, sir, ninety days of this war would pay for every slave at full value, in the States of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia. Nine months of the expenditures of this strife would have purchased all the slaves in the States named, together with those in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, thus preserving the peace the whole of the Mississippi to the Gulf. Less than two years of these expenditures would have paid for every slave that treads the soil of the nation. If northern men had treasured these things and learned that kind words can accomplish more than wrath, and if southern men had resolved to look upon slavery as upon other questions of moral and political economy, and both had determined to examine this as all other subjects, in calmness, and deliberation, we would have been spared the evils that now oppress us.
– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 12, 1862
“This terrible revolution was brought about by Mr. Yancey and his confederates, by inflaming the Southern mind against the dangers of abolition, which they knew to be false. The drove the South to madness, to self-destruction; and in the letter of Messers. Yancey, Rost and Mann to Lord John Russell, they have erected a monument of infamy to these conspirators. They say, what all must now admit, that it was from no fear that slaves would be liberated that secession took place. The very party in power has proposed to guaranty slavery forever in the States of the South would but remain in the Union. Mr. Lincoln’s message proposes no freedom to the slave, but announces subjection of his owner to the will of the Union – in other words, to the will of the North. Even after the battle of Bull Run both branches of Congress at Washington passed resolutions that the war is only waged in order to enforce that (pro-slavery) constitution, and uphold the laws, (many of them pro-slavery,) and out of the hundred and seventy-two votes in the lower house, they received all but two, in the Senate all but one. As the army commenced its march, the commanding general issued an order that no slaves should be received into or allowed to follow the camp. Now, sir, what has been the result of this unnecessary strife upon my State. – In 1860 our slave population was 114,965, and although we stood as a peninsula in the great ocean of freesoil around us, I hazard the assertion to-day that no property was more secure in the State than slave property. It was so regarded by everybody. Our white population at the same period was upward of one million. – How is it now? I doubt whether there are fifty thousand slaves in the State. The secessionists charged that the brigade commanded by the Senator from Kansas, sitting near me, seized their slaves, and took them out of the State, and in order to retaliate, they as I learn, have taken hundreds of Union men in the state, to be delivered over to their injured friends. – In addition to this, many of the largest slave holders of the state, fearing the result of the war in the earlier stages of the rebellion hurried off their slaves to the South. Others again, waiting until they were surrounded by hostile armies, abandoned negroes and everything else for the protection of themselves, their wives and children.
“The true value of real and personal property in Missouri was in 1860, $501,214,398. Aside from the depreciation of value which no man can now estimate, and beyond the loss of slaves to which I have referred, I think it is safe to say that ten percentum of this vast amount of property has been destroyed and forever lost to the owners in consequence of this war – an amount equal to the aggregate value of all slaves in the state at the commencement of hostilities. If I were to add to this the loss occasioned to the people of the State by the utter prostration of its agricultural, commercial and manufacturing interests for the last twelve months, I might add fifty millions more to the sum already named. Looking, then, to my own State, and I speak for it alone, I am not disposed to take issue with the President in regard to the future results of the war. I regard his expression as a prophecy, and not as a threat – a prophecy that I feel will be realized if this war continues. That it shall continue until the Union be restored, I have already expressed my wish in the amendment offered. Whether you adopt it or not, the great West will never be content until every mile of the Mississippi river from Anthony’s Falls to the Gulf of Mexico shall be under the jurisdiction of our government. Let the question be settled now. But the President negatives, positively negatives the construction given in the following language: ‘Such a proposition on the part of the general government sets up no claim or right by the Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested. It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them.’
“In this view of the matter, sir, I am perfectly willing that the proposition go before the people of my State, without at present expressing an opinion as to what course they should pursue. It is a new pledge of faith by the representatives of the people that this vexed question shall be left with the people of each state. It comes not in the spirit of arrogance demanding conformity with the views of theirs, but with humility, acknowledging if slavery be an evil, it is a sin for which we are all responsible, and for the removal of which we are willing to come with practical benevolence. It means more than all this. It intimates to the States that the nation would prefer gradual to immediate emancipation, and that the measures no pending in congress looking to such results should be suppressed by one of conciliation and good will. If this spirit had been more largely cultivated in days gone by, we would not this day be forced to witness a ruined South and a deeply depressed North. Why, sir, ninety days of this war would pay for every slave at full value, in the States of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia. Nine months of the expenditures of this strife would have purchased all the slaves in the States named, together with those in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, thus preserving the peace the whole of the Mississippi to the Gulf. Less than two years of these expenditures would have paid for every slave that treads the soil of the nation. If northern men had treasured these things and learned that kind words can accomplish more than wrath, and if southern men had resolved to look upon slavery as upon other questions of moral and political economy, and both had determined to examine this as all other subjects, in calmness, and deliberation, we would have been spared the evils that now oppress us.
– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 12, 1862
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