Today in History:

489 Series I Volume XV- Serial 21 - Baton Rouge-Natchez

Page 489 Chapter XXVII. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION.

labor and effort, viz, the lash, when another, viz, money, might be added with good effect. Fear and the other low and bad qualities of the slave are appealed to, but never the good. The relation therefore between capital and labor, which ought to be generous and confiding, is darkling, suspicious, unkindly, full of reproachful threats, and without concord or peace. This condition of things renders d the interests of society a per to politicians. Politics cease to be practicable or useful.

The questions that ought to have been discoursed in the late extraordinary Convention of Louisiana are, first, what ought the State of Louisiana do to adapt age; and, second, how can be State be assisted by the General Government in effecting the change? But instead of this, the only question before that body how to vindicate slavery by flogging the Yankees.

Compromises hereafter are not to be made with politicians, but with sturdy labor and the right to work. The interests of workingmen resent political trifling. Our political education, shaped almost entirely to the interests of slavery, has been false and vicious in the extreme, and it must be corrected with as much suddenness almost as that with which the Salem witchcraft came to its end. The only question that remains to decide is how the change shall take place.

We are not without examples and precedents in the history of the past. The enfranchisement of the people of Europe has been and is still going on the through the instrumentality of military service; and by this means our slaves might be readied in the scale of civilization and prepared for freedom. Fifty regiments might be raised among them at once, which could be employed in this climate to preserve order, and thus prevent the necessity of retrenching our liberties, as we should do by a large army exclusively of whites; for it is evident that a considerable army of whites would give stringency to our Government, while an army partly those influences which at present most endanger our liberties. At the end of five years they could be sent to Africa, and their places be filled with new enlistments.

There is no practicable evidence against the effects of immediate abolition, even if there is not in its favor. I have witnessed the sudden abolition of flogging at will in the Army and of the legalized flogging in the Navy against the prejudice and warped judgments of both, and from the beneficial effects there I have nothing to fear from the immediate abolition of slavery. I fear rather the violent consequences from a continuance of the evil. But should such an act devastate the whole State of Louisiana and render the whole soil here but the mere passageway of the fruits of the enterprise and industry of the Northwest, it would be better for the country at large than it is now as the sent of disaffection and rebellion.

When it is remembered that not a word is found is our Constitution sanctioning the buying and selling of human beings-a shameless act, which renders our country the disgrace of Christendom, and worse in this respect even than Africa herself-we should have less dread of seeing the degrading traffic stopped at once and forever. Half wages are already virtually paid for slave labor in the system of tasks which, in an unwilling spirit of compromise, most of the slave States have already been compelled to adopt. At the end of a period of five years of apprenticeship, or of fifteen at farthest, full wages could be paid to the enfranchised negro race to the double advantage of both master and man. This is just, for we not hold the slaves of Louisiana by the same


Page 489 Chapter XXVII. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION.