Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/188

154 the slaves have run away, and with them the capital necessary for the restoration of slavery.

The slave States, therefore, cannot expose their territory without leaving unprotected the institution for the protection of which the war was undertaken. They have to cover thousands and thousands of vulnerable points, for every plantation is an open wound, every negro cabin a sore. Every border or seaboard slave State will need her own soldiers, and more too, for the protection of her own slaves; and where then would be the material for the concentrated army?

Besides, the slave States harbor a dangerous enemy within their own boundaries, and that is slavery itself. Imagine them at war with anti-slavery people whom they have exasperated by their own hostility. What will be the effect upon the slaves? The question is not whether the North will instigate a slave rebellion, for I suppose they will not; the question is, whether they can prevent it, and I think they cannot. But the anticipation of a negro insurrection (and the heated imagination of the slaveholder will discover symptoms of a rebellious spirit in every trifle) may again paralyze the whole South. Do you remember the effect of John Brown's attempt? The severest blow he struck at the slave-power was not that he disturbed a town and killed several citizens, but that he revealed the weakness of the whole South. Let Governor Wise of Virginia carry out his threatened invasion of the free States, not with twenty-three, but with twenty-three hundred followers at his heels—what will be the result? As long as they behave themselves we shall let them alone; but as soon as they create any disturbance they will be put into the station-house; and the next day we shall read in the newspapers of some Northern city, among the reports of the police-court: “Henry A. Wise and others, for