Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/128

114 already existed against the delegates from New England, on account of a supposed design to throw off their allegiance to the mother country. "The Frankford advice" was followed. The delegates from Virginia took the lead on all occasions.

His son, John Q. Adams, finds a more substantial reason. In his speech on the Tariff, February 4, 1833, he said: "Not three days since, Mr Clayton of Georgia, called that species of population (viz. slaves) the machinery of the South. Now that machinery had twenty odd representatives in that hall,—not elected by the machinery, but by those who owned it. And if he should go back to the history of this government from its foundation, it would be easy to prove that its decisions had been effected, in general, by less majorities than that. Nay, he might go farther, and insist that that very representation had ever been, in fact, the ruling power of this government." "The history of the Union has afforded a continual proof that this representation of property, which they enjoy, as well in the election of President and Vice President of the United States, as upon the floor of the House of Representatives, has secured to the slave-holding States the entire control of the national policy, and, almost without exception, the possession of the highest executive office of the Union. Always united in the purpose of regulating the affairs of the whole Union by the standard of the slave-holding interest, their disproportionate numbers in the electoral colleges have enabled them, in ten out of twelve quadrennial elections, to confer the Chief Magistracy upon one of their own citizens.—Their suffrages at every election, without exception, have been almost exclusively confined to a candidate of their own caste. Availing themselves of the divisions which, from the nature of man, always prevail in communities entirely free, they have sought and found auxiliaries in the other quarters of the Union, by associating the passions of parties, and the ambition of individuals, with their own purposes, to establish and maintain throughout the confederated nation the slave-holding policy. The