Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/284

260 what had been done and well done." Standing in the presence of a listening Senate and pointing away to the Pacific, the "little giant" refers to the squatter sovereigns of Oregon and their slavery prohibition of 1845, and pronounces upon them the plaudit of "well done." May not a man safely follow in the footsteps of Jefferson, Randolph and Clay, or stand with Buchanan, Cass and Douglas upon this question?

I will now proceed to show from the nature of the case that slavery would be a burden and not a blessing to Oregon. Slavery is involuntary servitude—labor forced by power from unwilling laborers. There is no ambition, no enterprise, no energy in such labor. Like the horse to the tread-mill, or the ox to the furrow, goes the slave to his task. Compare this with the labor of free white men. Take the young man without family or property—no bondage fills the little horizon of his life with its unchangeable destiny. Conscious of his equality, of his right to aspire to, and attain any position in society, he will desire the respect and confidence of his fellowmen. All the world is his for action, and all the future is his for hope. Employ the head of a family to your work. Anxious to make his home comfortable, to educate his children, to provide a competency for old age, he will have strong inducements to be diligent and faithful in business. These motives energize free labor, but have little or no influence upon the slave. One free white man is worth more than two negro slaves in the cultivation of the soil, or any other business which can be influenced by zeal or the exercise of discretion. I do not claim that this is so where slaves are worked in gangs by a task-master, but it would be so in Oregon; for no man here can have slaves enough to justify the employment of an overseer and therefore every owner must manage his own slaves, or leave them to self-management. Situated as the farmer is in Oregon, he wants a laborer to be something more than a mere slave. He wants a man who can act sometimes in the capacity of agent—to whom he can entrust his business when absent from home, and who will go to the field and work without watching or driving. Negroes are