The slaveholders are
bent on securing the new territories for slavery, and they see in prospective
an immense slave nation embracing the Gulf of Mexico and all its islands, and
stretching from Maryland to Panama. For this they are now struggling, determined
while in the Union to govern and direct its energies; or if obliged to quit, to
build up a new nation slaveholding throughout. They are fighting with
desperation, and have been aided by traitors at the North. Webster's apostasy
is the most barefaced. Not only the cause of true antislavery is connected with
the overthrow of the slave propaganda, but also that of peace. As soon as it is
distinctly established that there shall be no more slave territory, there will
be little danger of war. My own earnest aim is to see slavery abolished
everywhere within the sphere of the national government,—which is in the
District of Columbia, on the high seas, and in the domestic slave-trade; and
beyond this, to have this government for freedom, so far as it can exert an
influence, and not for slavery. When this is accomplished, then slavery will be
taken out of the vortex of national politics; and the influences of education
and improved civilization, and of Christianity, will be left free to act
against it in the States where it exists.
SOURCE: Edward L.
Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 216-7
No comments:
Post a Comment