Page:Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Georgia 1849.djvu/37

34 require, enforce perfect subordination with the slave, and inflict the most exemplary punishment upon those who seek within our jurisdiction, to interfere with our domestic policy. It is worthy of consideration whether the punishment for negro stealing should not be made capital. Its frequent occurrence of late by persons from other States, admonishes us that strong measures should be adopted to arrest the evil. Those guilty of this nefarious crime within our limits, must be made to feel the vengeance of the law. Let our policy be marked with kindness to the slaves, but terror to him who dares invade the citizen's right of property in them. Under ordinary circumstances, I should abstain from introducing any topic not strictly local in its character; but there are great and paramount interests enjoyed by us in common with a portion of the States of the confederacy, which require constant vigilance and great moral firmness to protect from Federal encroachments. When aggression from this quarter is perpetrated, or the danger imminent, the Executive should communicate the same to the Representatives of the People, in terms of becoming forbearance and moderation, and suggest the adoption of such measures as the public interest demands. A fell spirit of blind and infuriated fanaticism, ever turbulent and disorganizing in its, tendency, has displayed itself to a greater or less extent, in most, if not all, of the nonslaveholding States of the Union, on the question of slavery. Contemptible as we regarded this spirit upon its first development, we have reached the point, in a few years, when it may be assumed as incontrovertibly true, that a controlling majority of the voters in most, if not all, the non-slaveholding States, are hostile to the institution of slavery; nor is it to be disguised that the Abolitionists, under the newname of the "Freesoil Party," are resolved, by every means that wicked hearts can devise, to torture, annoy, and harrass the slave-holder, until the institution itself is abolished, or the value of the slaves destroyed, unless we arrest it.—As a proof the ultimate design of these fanatics, may be mentioned the formation of associations, known as "Abolition Societies," from which they fulminate the coarsest abuse, and issue the most inflammatory addresses, resolutions, and reports, stigmatizing the citizens of the slave-holding States as heartless brutes, merciless tyrants, unscrupulous task-masters, and odious dealers in human flesh—in fine, they have found no epithet too harsh, or slander too gross to heap upon the South and its institutions.

Not content with this, they have of late assumed a bolder tone, and thrown off all disguise. Under their new organization of the "Freesoil Party," they have asserted, with consummate effrontery, that slavery shall never exist in the present or future territories of the United States; that beyond