Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/290

278 dered from Mexico for this purpose. The white polygamy of Joe Smith, and the black polygamy of men yet more shameless, there flourish side by side. It has spread over 1,051,523 square miles, where there was no legal slavery at all in 1788. It has blotted the Mississippi Valley with more than 1,580,000 slaves. It has put slavery in a population of 3,250,303 white persons, which else would never have had an entailment of this curse upon their property, their education, and their morality, and their religion!

Why was all this? Has the South the most money, and so can buy up the North? the most votes, and so can scare us by overwhelming numbers? Not at all; the South is poor in money; in numbers she is weak. The North is strong in both. The South wanted slavery, the North did not want freedom for the African. Before 1808, Northern clergymen occasionally ventured their little savings in the slave-trade: since 1808, they obey with alacrity all attempts of the slave power to blaspheme the higher law of God! At each step, the South becomes more imperious, more insulting. She has served us right ! Nine times she has demanded a sacrifice—nine times the North has granted the demand. In some twenty-four millions of men, every seventh man is a slave ; the children of Jefferson and Madison are sold at public vendue. Senator Foote roared in the Capitol; his father's sons were slaves in the same street! It is "a great country" a "Union" worth saving! But who is to blame for all this? The North has had the majority in the Federal councils from the beginning. It is the North who is to blame for these nine steps — for establishing, spreading, fostering, and perpetuating the worst institution wherewith the Spaniard has dared to blot the Western continent. Who put slavery in the Constitution, made it Federal? who put it in the new States? who got new soil to plant it in? who carried it across the Mississippi—into Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Utah, New Mexico? who established it in the capital of the United States? who adopted slavery and volunteered to catch a runaway, in 1793, and repeated the act in 1850,—in defiance of all law, all precedent, all right ? Why, it was the North. "Spain armed herself with bloodhounds," said Mr Pitt, "to extirpate the wretched natives of America."