Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/13

 thoroughly.

ence and in

must be exhibited

It

as

it

is



alike in

its influ-

animating character, so that not only its outside but its inside may be seen. This is no time for soft words or excuses. All such are out of place. They may turn away wrath but what is the wrath of man ? This is no time to abandon any advantage in the arits



gument.

on

Senators sometimes announce that they resist Slavery

grounds only, and remind us that they say nothing This is wrong. Slavery must be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral. Ours is no holiday contest nor is it any strife of rival factions of White and Red Roses of theatric Neri and Bianchi but it is a solemn battle between Right and Wrong between Good and Evil. Such a battle can not be fought with excuses or with rose-water. There is austere work to be done, and Freedom can not consent to fling away any of her weapons. If I were disposed to shrink from this discussion, the boundless assumptions now made by Senators on the other side would not allow me. The whole character of Slavery as a pretended form of civilization is put directly in issue, with a pertinacity and a hardihood which banish all reserve on this side. In these assumptions, Senators from South-Carolina naturally take the lead. Following Mr. Calhoun, who pronounced " Slavery the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world," and Mr. McDufhe, who did not shrink from calling it "the cornerstone of the republican edifice," the Senator from South-Carolina [Mr. Hammond] insists that "its forms of society are the best in the world ;" and his colleague [Mr. Chesnut] takes up One Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Davis] adds, the strain. that Slavery " is but a form of civil government for those who are not fit to govern themselves ;" and his colleague [Mr. Brown] openly vaunts that it "is a great moral, social, and political political

of the moral question.











blessing

— a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master."

One Senator from Virginia, tion of

what he

holding

man

States,'"'

is

[Mr. Hunter,] in a studied vindicapleased to call " the social system of the slave-

exalts Slavery as "the

normal condition of hu-

society," " beneficial to the non-slave-owner as

it is

to the

slave-owner," "best for the happiness of both races;" and, in enthusiastic advocacy, declares, " that the very keystone of the