Henry
Clay, the “great compromiser,” pled with the abolitionists to cease
their incendiary activities which threatened to disrupt the Union in a
speech before the United States Senate in February 1839. The States he
labels as “free” were former slave and slave trading States which were
offering no peaceful and practical solutions to the African slavery they
helped nurture and perpetuate.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Henry Clay on the Abolitionists Mad and Fatal Course
“….Abolition
should no longer be regarded as an imaginary danger. The abolitionists,
let me suppose, succeed in their present aim of uniting the inhabitants
of the free States, as one man, against the inhabitants of the slave
States. Union on one side will beget union on the other.
And
this process of reciprocal consolidation will be attended with all the
violent prejudices, embittered passions, and implacable animosities,
which ever degraded or deformed human nature. A virtual dissolution of
the Union will have taken place, while the forms of its existence
remain.
The
most valuable element of union, mutual kindness, the feelings of
sympathy, the fraternal bonds, which now happily unite us, will have
been extinguished for ever.
One
section will stand in menacing and hostile array against the other. The
collision of opinion will be quickly followed by the clash of arms. I
will not attempt to describe scenes which now happily lie concealed from
our view. Abolitionists themselves would shrink back in dismay and
horror at the contemplation of desolated fields, conflagrated cities,
murdered inhabitants, and the overthrow of the fairest fabric of human
government that ever rose to animate the hopes of civilized man.
Nor
should these abolitionists flatter themselves that, if they can succeed
in uniting the people of the free States, they will enter the contest
with a numerical superiority that must insure victory. All history and
experience proves the hazard and uncertainty of war. And we are
admonished by Holy Writ, that the race is not to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong. But if they were to conquer, whom would they
conquer? A foreign foe – one who had insulted our flag, invaded our
shores, and laid our country waste?
No,
sir; no, sir. It would be a contest without laurels, without glory; a
self, a suicidal conquest; a conquest of brothers over brothers,
achieved by one over another portion of the descendants of common
ancestors, who, nobly pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their
sacred honor, had fought and bled, side by side, in many a hard battle
on land and ocean, severed our country from the British crown, and
established our original independence.
The
inhabitants of the slave States are sometimes accused by their Northern
brethren with displaying rashness and sensibility to the operations and
proceedings of the abolitionists.
[But]
Let me suppose that the people of the slave States were to form
societies, subsidize presses, make large pecuniary contributions, send
forth numerous missionaries throughout all their borders, and enter into
machinations to burn the beautiful capitals, destroy the productive
manufactories, and sink in the ocean the gallant ships of the Northern
States. Would these incendiary proceedings be regarded as neighborly and
friendly, and consistent with the fraternal sentiments which should
ever by cherished by one portion of the Union toward the another?
Would they excite no emotion? Occasion no manifestations of dissatisfaction? Nor lead to any acts of retaliatory violence?
I
beseech the abolitionists themselves, solemnly to pause in their mad
and fatal course….let them select….one more harmless, that does not
threaten to deluge our country in blood. I entreat that portion of my
countrywomen, who have given their countenance to abolition, to….reflect
that the ink which they shed in subscribing with their fair hands
abolition petitions, may prove but the prelude to the shedding of the
blood of their brethren.
I
adjure all the inhabitants of the free States to rebuke and
discountenance, by their opinion and their example, measures which must
inevitably lead to the most calamitous consequences.”
(The South, A Documentary History, Ina Woestemeyer Van Noppen, D. Van Nostrand Company, 1958, pp. 258-260)
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