REMARKS OF MR. HARLAN.
IN SENATE, Tuesday,
March 25.
Mr. HARLAN. Mr.
President, I regret very much that Senators depart so far from the proprieties,
as I consider it, of this Chamber, as to make the allusions they do. It is done merely to stimulate a prejudice
which exists against a race already trampled under foot. I refer to the allusions to white people
embracing colored people as their brethren, and the invitations by Senators to
white men and white women to marry colored people. Now, sir, if we were to descend into an
investigation of the facts on that subject, it would bring the blush to the
cheeks of some of these gentlemen. I
once had occasion to direct the attention of the Senate to an illustrious
example from the State of the Senator who inquired if any of us would marry a
greasy old wench. It is history that an
illustrious citizen of his State, who once occupied officially the chair that
you, sir, now sit in, lived notoriously and publicly with a negro wench, and
raised children by her.
Mr. SAULSBURY. Let me
interrupt the gentleman for a moment.
Does he refer to any citizen of Delaware?
Mr. HARLAN. I
referred to the Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. Davis].
Mr. SAULSBURY. I beg
your pardon.
Mr. HARLAN. I
referred to a gentleman who held the second office in the gift of the American
people; and never yet have heard a Senator on this floor denounce the conduct
and the association of that illustrious citizen of our country. I know of a family of colored or mulatto
children, the children, too, of a gentleman who very recently occupied a seat
on the other side of the Chamber, who are now at school in Ohio. Yes, sir, the children of a Senator who very
recently, not to exceed a year since, occupied a seat on this floor, a Senator
from a slave State.
I do not desire to consume the time of the Senate and of the
country in calling attention to these facts; it is humiliating enough to know
that they exist; but if Senators who represent slaveholding States will
perpetually drag this subject to the attention of the Senate and of the
country, let them take the logical consequences of their own folly, and bear
the shame which an investigation of the facts must inflict on themselves and
their constituents.
I know there is a newspaper slander – written, printed, and
published as a slander – on those who went down to South Carolina for a
benevolent purpose, at least a desire to look after the welfare of those who
had been cast off by their masters and had no means of support, the armies of
the Republic furnishing them no protection, and as it is said, actually robbing
them of the scanty supplies left them by their absconding owners. Benevolent gentlemen have gone, as it is
said, and I believe truly to furnish them temporarily with food and raiment,
and also employment, to enable them to provide, in part at least, by the labor
of their hands, for their own wants. I
confess I can perceive nothing objectionable in this; nor do I believe that the
Senator himself who drags up that subject, as it seems to me, unnecessarily, in
the discussion of the provisions of this bill, can point out anything improper
in it. Does he desire that those persons
who have been deserted by their masters should be left there to starve and die
like brutes? I know he does not. Then what other means can he devise for their
protection and support; or does he desire the President to withdraw the Army
and permit the rebels, who are now striking at the life of the nation, to
return to their possessions under the folds of a rebel flag, reasserting their
ownership over their deserted slaves? If
he desires the armies of the Republic to push forward until the supremacy of
the laws of the Union shall be acknowledged, under the protecting folds of the
stars and stripes, to its utmost limits, what does he propose to do with these
destitute people? Does he propose to
support them directly from the national Treasury? Would this be more wise than to permit
benevolence to provide for their temporary wants and to permit the labor of their
own hands to supply their necessities for the future?
I do not deem it proper on this occasion to enter into a
labored investigation of the probabilities of amalgamation of the white with
the negro race if the negroes should all be set free. How is it in point of fact? Do you find white gentlemen and white ladies
marrying the free negroes that are now in this District? Do you find them marrying the negroes that
are now free in Maryland, and I understand the Senator says there are over
eighty thousand of them in that State?
Do Senators find that the amalgamation of the white and negro race is in
progress in the States they represent?
And if so, does it progress more rapidly in the free than in the slave
States? And in the slave States does it
progress more rapidly among the free negroes than among the slaves. I have known of but three cases in my own
State, and all three of those men married to wenches have been residents of
slave States, where, I doubt not they acquired their tastes. [Laughter.]
Liberating the negroes carries with it no obligation to marry their
wenches to white men. Gentlemen may
follow their tastes afterwards as now.
The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] has furnished me
with the figures showing the exact number of free negroes in the States of
Delaware and Maryland. In the former
there are 19, 723 free negroes, and but 1,798 slaves, and in Maryland 83,718
free persons of color, and but 87,700 slaves.
If the white population of Maryland does not intermarry and amalgamate
with 83, 718 free negroes now in the State, would their tastes in that regard
be changed in more of them were liberated?
If the people of this city, the capital of the nation, are not now
insulting our delicate sensibilities by intermarrying with nearly twelve
thousand free negroes here, would their tastes be changed in that regard by the
liberation of about fifteen hundred others, for I understand on consultation with
the chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia that there are not
now probably to exceed fifteen hundred slaves in the District. There were when the census was taken but a
trifle over three thousand.
This is merely a fling intended on the part of those who use
it to arouse a prejudice that they know is deep-seated in the minds of the people
of the free States against association with the colored population. They know what I know and here state, that
there is in all the free States a deep-seated prejudice against an association
with the colored population – a prejudice that does not exist in the slave
Sates. There you find this association
together, not in the social circle, it is true.
You find them, however at work together in the same shop, at the same
bench, on the same farm, in the same buildings, at the same kind of toil. You find their children on the same play
grounds, at the same games, at the same amusements, not unfrequently eating,
sleeping, quarreling, and fighting with each other without reference to
color. It is so in this District. We all observe it every day we live. Any man who will take the trouble to walk up
Pennsylvania avenue at this moment will see the white hackman and the negro
standing side by side, whip in hand, waiting for a job. He will see the white man and the negro on
the cross streets, sitting on wagon or cart, side by side, waiting for
employment. Go into the hotels, and you
will find them there, white men and negroes, white females and colored females,
in the employment of the same landlord.
Go into the Government workshops, into your own navy yard, as I doubt
not all have done, and as I have done, and you will see black men and white men
working side by side swinging the same kind of hammer, forging the same piece
of iron.
It is here in a slave District and in the slave States that
men learn to associate familiarly as laborers and mechanics with the colored
population; and as a result of that familiar association at the daily toils of life,
there is less shrinking away from them; less reluctance at receiving them into
their embrace, so handsomely described by the senator from Delaware but a
moment since. No, sir; if you inquire
for those willing to receive colored persons into their embrace, you will find
a large majority of them born, brought up, and educated in the midst of a slave
holding community; and as a result of this familiar association, you will find
in every slaveholding community a much larger number of mulattoes than in the
free states.
But then what is to be done with these fifteen hundred
liberated slaves? If they are liberated
we are told that they must be expatriated; they must be sent into some other
country, into a strange community, and there compelled to provide in a land of
strangers for the supply of their daily wants?
Where are they now? In the bosom of the families [of] this
metropolis. They are the house servants
and field hands of those who now claim to be their owners. Whence, then, a necessity for expatriating
them? It does not increase their number
to liberate them. If their labor is now
necessary for the industrial purposes and comfort of the people of this
District, will it not be as necessary after they shall have been liberated? –
If they are now needed as house servants and hotel servants, laborers and
mechanics, in shops and fields, will they not be necessary afterwards? The only change in this regard that I can
perceive is that after their liberation, and those who now enjoy their labor
gratuitously will then, if their service are continued, be compelled to pay
them reasonable compensation, the Government paying them a bonus of $300 each
to relinquish the supposed right to their labor without the payment of
wages. This is the only wrong that will
have been inflicted on those who now own them.
They now employ them, and give them food and raiment and shelter for
their services, without reference to their own wishes, coercing obedience with
the lash when found necessary.
Afterwards they will be compelled to consult the will and wishes of the
employed, and pay them probably stipulated wages, with which the servants will
provide his own supplies. No injury is
inflicted on society, no change is wrought on its organization, and no change
is made in the political condition of the emancipated. They will have acquired no political rights
or franchises. They will have acquired simply
the right to enjoy as they choose the proceeds of their own labor. But if you confer this right on fifteen
hundred more negroes now slaves in this district, we are gravely warned by
Senators, in most eloquent and pathetic strains, that we will thus inaugurate a
war of extermination between the white and black race! Yes if you confer on these fifteen hundred
poor negroes the right now enjoyed by more than eleven thousand of their
colored brethren now living in the District, allow them to collect and use the
wages of their own labor, you will incite a spirit of wholesale murder! –
Rather than pay them just compensation for their services, their former
masters, who have lived on the proceeds of their unpaid toil, will take down
their rifles and shoot them! A war of
extermination is to arise! Sir, I have
understood that it was murder now in this District to kill a colored man; that
so far from justifying the indiscriminate murder of those poor people who are
now free, you regard it as a very grave offense against society to shed his
blood, and would arrest, indict, try and hang the felon who would perpetrate it
in a single case. I inquire if it is not
also a felony now in Maryland? I inquire
of the Senator from Maryland, who predicts a war of extermination immediately
on the liberation of the slaves in this district, why it has not heretofore
commenced: and if it would not be murder to shoot or otherwise maliciously destroy
the life of a free negro of his own State under the laws of Maryland as they
now exist?
Mr. KENNEDY. If the
honorable Senator desires an answer, I will say in a very few words that there
is now a bitter antipathy between the laboring white people and the free
blacks, and that it has been so strong heretofore in the State of Maryland that
we have had great difficulty in restraining the passage of what we consider
inhuman laws. The antipathy is very
strong between the two classes of people, and I do not know how far they might
be excited to deeds of violence, of the proportion of free blacks that now
exists was greatly increased.
Mr. HARLAN. I am very
much obliged to the Senator for his explanation; and yet I beg leave very
respectfully to differ from him in relation to the fact which he has
stated. In my opinion, these feelings
are not excited by the laboring men. I
see laboring white men standing side by side with laboring negroes in the
District seeking for jobs, for employment –
Mr. KENNEDY. The
Senator will allow me to say right here that I employ both classes, and one of
the troubles that I have is to restrain that very feeling. I speak from experience.
Mr. HARLAN. I am
inclined to think that any improper results which might grow out of this
prejudice could be readily controlled by that part of the community enjoying
high social and official position, like the Senator from Maryland and the
Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Delaware, who have spoken
to-day. What is the inference to be
drawn by the less reflecting from this statement made in this discussion. They declare, “if you liberate the slaves,
allow them to become free, the free white people will rise and exterminate
them;” and, is not the inference legitimate that it would, in the opinion of
the speaker, be proper for this to be done?
Is it not indirectly saying to every laboring
white man of Maryland, “you may murder indiscriminately those that come in
contact with your interests, in competition with you in the various avocations
of life?” You say to them, “you will do
so;” you say to this entire population in this District, “you will arise and
murder the free colored people if we set a few more free;” and this statement
thus far has not been accompanied even with so much as a regret at the supposed
existence of such vindictiveness. Sir,
the slaveholders of Maryland control the legislation of those States, and they
control, to a fearful extend the opinion of the masses; and they can as readily
give to public opinion the right as the wrong direction; they can as readily
conform it to the plain principles of a Christianized humanity as to degrade it
to the standard which controls the policy of communities in a savage condition.
Why, sir, I know a people not many hundred miles from my own
home that are to-day engaged in a war of extermination. The Chippewas and the Sioux never meet each
other on the plains, but to murder and massacre each other. A war of extermination with all the vindictiveness
and atrocities common to savage life, is in progress. They meet only to imbrue their hands in their
brothers’ blood.
Mr. KENNEDY. Will the
honorable Senator allow me to make to him a single statement in further answer
to the question he put just now?
Mr. HARLAN.
Certainly.
Mr. KENNEDY. One of
the worst riots we have had in Baltimore for many years, arose from the fact
that free negroes were employed in the ship-yards as caulkers. They came in competition with a class of men
who had before done work of that sort, who determined to drive them out of
those yards, and from that cause a tremendous riot ensued. I do not even now know whether a single free
negro is allowed to work in the ship-yards.
There is a feeling against them on the part of a class of people who
regard them as interfering with their exclusive privilege to do work of that
sort themselves.
Mr. HARLAN. And in
that I see an explanation of the suggestion I made. Of course the Senator’s knowledge of the
facts existing in his own State, and in the metropolis of that State, is better
than mine. I will not dispute the truth
of his statement; but he winds it up by saying that even now he does not know
that a “free negro” is permitted to work in the yards of that city; and why? Because the owners of the slaves cultivate
this prejudice for the purpose of driving out the free negroes who come in
competition with their own slave hands, so frequently hired out for wages to be
placed in their owner’s pockets.
Mr. KENNEDY. The
slave interest of the State of Maryland, I may be allowed to say, is a very
small one – seventeen thousand altogether.
That interest does not prevail anywhere in Maryland except in the
tide-water counties. – The Senator is entirely mistaken in supposing that it
prevails in Maryland. It is in a
minority.
Mr. HARLAN. As to the
fact, of course the Senator’s knowledge is more perfect than mine could
be. I have in my hand, however, a
statement furnished me by the Senator from Massachusetts, which gives the
number of slaves in Maryland as eighty-seven thousand one hundred and
eighty-eight.
Mr. KENNEDY. Yes,
Sir.
Mr. HARLAN. I know
the institution is going down in Maryland; it is sinking under the quiet
influence of emigration from the free States and enlightened public opinion;
but even in Maryland the slaveholding portion of the community controls its
legislation, controls public opinion, and stimulates and sustains the savage
doctrines which we have heard advanced on this floor from their Senators – I use
the word with respect; but I illustrate it with the example I have just
cited. As I have said, among the savages
on our western plains, wars of extermination are going on day by day; these
tribes are melting away by this vindictive and savage strife, which they keep
up between belligerent tribes. Now, is
it possible that Senators will teach the Senate and the country and the
Christian world that the people of Maryland are not elevated in civilization
above the condition of the Chippewas and Sioux; that there, too, we have
hundreds of thousands of savages with white skins who will immediately commence
a war of extermination – on whom? On men
with whom they have lived their lives through, men who were born with them on
the same soil, men who were brought up with them under the same roof, who
played with them in childhood on the same grounds; who did not accompany them
to the same schools for they have been excluded from the means of mental
culture, who did not accompany them to the same church for they have been
excluded also from a high order of religious culture.
Mr. KENNEDY. Does the
honorable Senator mean to apply that remark to Maryland?
Mr. HARLAN. I am
applying to Maryland the doctrines the Senator has advanced to-day. He says that in Maryland, if the slaves be
set free, the white population will arise and massacre the entire colored
population. If the people of Maryland
will do this savage act, they are not to-day elevated above the condition of
the Chippewas and Sioux; no, they are below the civilization of these savages,
because they murder their enemies, not their friends, their servants, and the
people of their own households.
Mr. KENNEDY. I trust
the honorable Senator will allow me to make a statement.
Mr. HARLAN.
Certainly.
Mr. KENNEDY. I think
the Senator entirely misapprehends the scope of my remarks, and I desire to say
here now, that we have some of the best regulated and best established churches
and schools for negroes in the city of Baltimore that are to be found in the
United States. We have, further than
that, highly educated men who were slaves who are preaching to the free colored
people of Baltimore. I have this day in
my family a manumitted slave who has the privilege of teaching school. A manumitted slave of my own family is with
me now, and is a teacher of a school.
There is no restriction whatever in Maryland upon education of any sort
in regard to the colored population.
Mr. HARLAN. I would
inquire at the heel of that remark of the Senator if he has any disposition to
murder them?
Mr. KENNEDY. None
whatever; but there is a natural opposition that exists between two antagonist
races of people; and the colored race has been protected by the well ordered
and well regulated people of my State, men, like myself and other gentlemen who
represent the state who are struggling everywhere to prevent the dominance of a
rule that might be exercised by an antagonistic class.
Mr. HARLAN. And if
the Senator does not feel a savage disposition to murder his freed man, does he
say that the mass of the slaveholders of his State are less civilized than
himself?
Mr. KENNEDY. Not one
particle more than the people of the gentleman’s own country seem disposed to
murder the white people of my section.
Mr. HARLAN. Then, if
neither he nor his fellow slaveholders in Maryland now entertain such a
disposition, I apprehended that no such cruel result will flow from the
liberation of slaves that do not live in his own State, but live under a
different jurisdiction. No, sir; these
Senators have misrepresented their own people, they are not the savages they
have been portrayed on this floor. I
doubt not they are in possession of all the elements of humanity. A humanity that has been cultivated highly,
cultivated well, and that they would be as far from murdering the colored men,
merely because they are free, as would I or the people whom I represent.
Mr. DAVIS. Will the
gentleman allow me a word?
Mr. HARLAN.
Certainly.
Mr. DAVIS. The
gentleman certainly misconceives or misrepresents the argument that I
made. The position I assumed, and which
I endeavored to sustain by argument was this: that if slaves were liberated in
States where they exist in great numbers, without colonization, it would give
rise to a war of races that would lead to the results which the gentleman is
now deprecating; and I maintain that that is a true position.
Mr. HARLAN. I think
that that might possibly be brought about through the teachings of such
gentlemen as those who now represent these States on this floor. They declare on the floor of the American
Senate in the face of a Christian nation, in the face of two hundred millions
of Christians now living on the earth, that if men are to be liberated from a
slavery that is more galling and degrading than any that has ever existed on
the face of the earth from the commencement of time down to this moment their
people will rise and murder the poor freed men.
They say so without expressing so much as a regret. They declare it as a prophecy! – They thus
inculcate its rightfulness. They thus
teach their people, that in their opinion this wholesale murder would be right,
or at least, the result of a weakness to be tolerated. They thus approve and justify this savage
feeling – if it exists; but, sir, it does not exist; I will defend the people
of Kentucky, of Maryland, of Delaware, and of this District, from any such
slanderous aspersion. They entertain no
such purpose on their part as the indiscriminate murder of the colored
population, if they should become free.
I doubt not but that the public sentiment that now exists, induced by
the slaveholders themselves, in the States to which I have referred, is
bitterly opposed to the liberation of the slaves; but if these slaves should be
set free, it will be effected by their own Legislatures; and if thus set free, no such savage war would
arise. Nor is it probable that their
liberation by the exercise of arbitrary power, of which there is not the
slightest apprehension on the part of these Senators themselves, could such an
historical anomaly be produced.
The Senator from Massachusetts very aptly inquired of
Senators who have rung the changes on this supposed calamity, to inform the
Senate when such a wholesale murder ever commenced between members of the same
community on account of race? Can any
Senator put his hand on the page of history that records it? None have, and none can. You say that if two races are thrown together
as freemen, they will necessarily engender a war of extermination. Such a war never did commence between two
races of free people; and until the laws of the human mind and the human heart
change, never will. You cannot point to
any great people that has ever existed that has not been composed to a greater
or less extend of, so called, different races.
You may refer to any of the great empires of antiquity – the Chaldean,
the Persian, the Assyrian, the Grecian, and the Roman empires, and you will
find that they each embraced people of every kindred, tongue, and race, and
from every clime. It has been so of
every highly enlightened and prosperous people since civilization dawned. It is so now of the most polished and
powerful nations of Europe and Asia. In
proof, I need but cite the British and French Empires. To say that men of different, so called,
races are natural enemies to each other, and will commence and wage a war of
extermination when brought into contact, is a libel on humanity. It is a libel on the Author of the human
race. The Almighty never implanted such
feelings in the human heart. They never
have been cultivated by an enlightened people.
Wars of extermination exist only among savages; and with them only
between belligerent tribes.
But I was drawn away from the argument of the Senator from
Delaware, that if the fifteen hundred slaves who are now the chambermaids, and
the bootblacks, and the barbers, and the hostlers, and the wood choppers and
wood sawyers, and coal carriers, and cart drivers, and carriage drivers and laborers
on the gardens and grounds that surround this magnificent palace shall be
liberated, somebody will commence a wholesale murder.
Mr. SAULSBURY. I said
no such thing. If the gentleman is
alluding to me, I did not say a word about it.
Mr. HARLAN. I am most
happy to hear the Senator recant the doctrine I have attributed to him.
Mr. SAULSBURY. I do
not recant anything. I said nothing of
the kind.
Mr. HARLAN. The
negroes then will be saved. There is no
danger of this wholesale murder.
Mr. SAULSBURY. I will
reply to the gentleman when he is through.
Mr. HARLAN. There is
no danger of this war of extermination at least in the streets of this capital;
and the fifteen hundred slaves now laboring quietly under the control of their
masters will probably not be murdered by their former owners if they should be
liberated. I would almost guaranty that
the liberated slaves will not murder their masters if their masters will not
murder them. The mere fact of their liberation
could hardly incite them to such a diabolical course of conduct. Why should it? If they prefer to live under the shelter that
their masters have provided for them, and to labor day by day without wages for
the gratuity they may receive from the hand of their former owner, their legal
freedom will not compel a severance. I
will not vote for a law to compel them to leave. The Senator desires us to do so; he proposes
an amendment to this bill that will compel these poor men to leave their kind
masters, to go homeless and penniless and friendless into a land of
strangers. I voted against his
proposition. I am disposed to leave them
where they now are, and let them work on for their masters; if their masters
choose to pay them for their labor, all well; and if they decide to work on
without pay, be it so. I perceive no
motive that can arise out of the removal of the legal shackles that bind them,
calculated to stimulate a disposition to murder or destroy. They would be anomalous human beings if the mere
act of liberating them would convert them into savages and murders.
If neither their masters nor they are disposed to engage in
such strif, I apprehend there is no great danger. I never yet have met a white man or white
woman in the District who manifested this species of vindictiveness against the
colored people. I am gland for the same
of humanity that it is so. Why should
they? Do you answer because they are
poor and ugly and ignorant and feeble.
Is it possible that an American Senator will teach here to-day that because
the white race is said to be more powerful and more highly endowed, and has
acquired a high position in the scale of civilization, he may with impunity
trample on the feeble and defenseless?
The advancement of such a dogma ought to mantle the statesman’s cheek
with the blush of shame. It is at war
with every manly impulse. Why, sir, I
have occasionally in passing through the rough society which sometimes
congregates on the frontier, observed a strong, powerful man stepping into the
ring in the midst of a broil “to pick up the glove,” as it was called, in
defense of a gray haired man, or a boy, or a feeble person, about to be
assailed by some thoughtless person of superior strength, with the declaration,
“sir, if you must have a fight take a man of your inches,” and such an act
never failed to secure the applause of the crowd. This is true humanity; it is moral courage;
it is a kind of natural religion, superior to much we hear from the pulpit. It is true courage; it prompts to personal sacrifice
in the defense of the feeble. And I have
never yet witnessed a crowd of frontiersmen, however rough and uncultivated,
who could be induced to applaud the victor in a contest with an inferior. This principle of humanity it is thought by
many was illustrated on a grand scale when the English nation and the French
people stepped in between Russia and the Turks.
Here was a great and powerful nation attempting to crush out a feeble
people. The contest was unequal; it was
the athletic champion with iron muscles in deadly strife with the child or decrepit
age, and two powerful nations stepped in between them and commanded peace, and
took up the glove in defense of the weaker.
I suppose this element of humanity to be the foundation of that manly
pride that most men experience when they stand in defense of their own
families, in defense of their wives and children and parents. They stand between the feeble and the strong,
and peril their existence in defence of their rights. As a nation we act from these generous and
manly impulses in our intercourse with the children of the prairies and forests. They are comparatively a feeble people, incapable
of taking care of themselves, and you organize a bureau under the Government
and appoint a Commissioner and appropriate millions of dollars year by year to
pay agents to stand between them and your own citizens who might be stimulated
by avarice to become their oppressors.
And this policy usually receives the applause of Christian men. – It is
but another illustration of better impulses of an enlightened humanity – a powerful
nation stretches out its strong arm to protect the feeble.
Here is another feeble people, a race of men that are
inferior to us in beauty, not equal to us in symmetry of body, not equal to us
possibly in original mental and moral capacities or endowments. They are supposed not to be as capable of
taking care of themselves as the Anglo-Saxons or others of the Caucasian race;
and on that account you tell me they are to be trampled under foot. You are to trample them into the earth
because they are feeble! Do you treat
your own feeble people in this way? I have
sometimes stepped into a probate court, and I have seen a judge sitting on the
tribunal of justice appointing a guardian for the persons and property of orphan
children, and requiring him to give bond and security for the proper execution
of the trust. They have neither father
nor mother; these natural guardians have been called hence; they may become the
victims of avarice or malice. The
officer of the law steps in for their protection. You sir, see this evidence of a Christian civilization! And two hundred millions of Christians
scattered up and down in the earth united in applause. Orators and statesmen chime in with the axiom,
the very object of the organization of civil society is the protection of the
weak from the aggression of the strong.
Now if this be so in relations to every other people, in
relation to weak members of your race, would it not be equally humane to
provide for the protection of feeble colored people that have been born in our
midst without any fault surely of their own; who have been cast here, you may
say, as waifs on society by an act of Providence? Are we to crush them with the iron heel of
civilization that brings only blessings to all others? And if their shackles shall be stricken off,
are we indeed doomed to witness their indiscriminate murder because they are
weak, because they are less capable of providing means of their own defense
than we? This is an illustration of what
is sometimes styled the superior civilization of the slave system, and a
conception of an enlightened humanity that I could not have believed a few
years since would have been exemplified on the floor of the American Senate; because
a people are weak, therefore you have a right to murder them, murder them
indiscriminately, murder them en masse
only because they are no longer slaves.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye,
Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 5, 1862, p. 1
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