Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/287

Rh country with feelings of hatred and revenge rankling in their dark bosoms; to bring them by water, to say nothing about the expense, is a hazardous and almost impracticable thing. Suppose, however, all these difficulties overcome, and your slaves safe upon the soil of Oregon, then they would stay with you, or not, just as they pleased.

North is the Territory of Washington with its sparse settlements—its vast forests and mountain ranges, in which a fugitive slave might hide from an army of pursuers. Eastward dwell numerous" Indian tribes, to whose welcome embrace a slave might fly and be safe. No fugitive slave law would avail there, or friends of the master be found to assist in his recapture. South is the free State of California, where doubtless the fugitive slave could find friends to speed him on to a more perfect freedom in Mexico.

Isolated as Oregon is by thousands of miles from other slave States, and all the supports of slavery, an effort to maintain the institution here would be almost as impotent as the command of the vain Canute to the waves of the ocean. Some say that slave property will not be so unsafe here as I pretend, for negroes will not go to and consort with Indians, but otherwise is the evidence. General Jackson found fugitive slaves fighting with the Creeks in the war of 1812. Major Dade's command of 112 (except four) was slaughtered in the Florida war by a party of Seminoles and forty fugitive slaves, the negroes outstripping the Indians in ferocity and brutal treatment of the dead. There is another reason outweighing all others for the unsafeness of slaves in this country. T refer to public sentiment, and I say that slavery can no more stand as a useful institution with one-half of public opinion arrayed against it than a house can stand with one corner stone.

Look at the Southern States. What a unanimity of sentiment exists there in favor of slavery. Look at the laws enacted and the pains taken to preserve this unanimity. This is a necessity of the system. Every man of common sense must see that slaves would not only be unsafe as property, but