I had some conversation with Calhoun on the slave question
pending in Congress. He said he did not think it would produce a dissolution of
the Union, but, if it should, the South would be from necessity compelled to
form an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain.
I said that would be returning to the colonial state.
He said, yes, pretty much, but it would be forced upon them.
I asked him whether he thought, if by the effect of this alliance, offensive
and defensive, the population of the North should be cut off from its natural
outlet upon the ocean, it would fall back upon its rocks bound hand and foot,
to starve, or whether it would not retain its powers of locomotion to move
southward by land. Then, he said, they would find it necessary to make their
communities all military. I pressed the conversation no further; but if the
dissolution of the Union should result from the slave question, it is as
obvious as anything that can be foreseen of futurity, that it must shortly
afterwards be followed by the universal emancipation of the slaves. A more
remote but perhaps not less certain consequence would be the extirpation of the
African race on this continent, by the gradually bleaching process of
intermixture, where the white portion is already so predominant, and by the
destructive progress of emancipation, which, like all great religious and
political reformations, is terrible in its means, though happy and glorious in
its end. Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union, and
it is a contemplation worthy of the most exalted soul whether its total
abolition is or is not practicable: if practicable, by what means it may be
effected, and if a choice of means be within the scope of the object, what
means would accomplish it at the smallest cost of human sufferance. A
dissolution, at least temporary, of the Union, as now constituted, would be
certainly necessary, and the dissolution must be upon a point involving the
question of slavery, and no other. The Union might then be reorganized on the
fundamental principle of emancipation. This object is vast in its compass,
awful in its prospects, sublime and beautiful in its issue. A life devoted to
it would be nobly spent or sacrificed. This conversation with Calhoun led me
into a momentous train of reflection. It also engaged me so much that I
detained him at his office, insensibly to myself, till near five o'clock, an
hour at least later than his dining-time.
SOURCE: Charles Francis Adams, Editor, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from
1795 to 1848, Volume 4, p. 530-1
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