Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/493

 for this portion of the community we are bound to legislate. When honorable gentlemen inform us we overrate the cruelty and the dangers of slavery, and tell us that their slaves are happy and contented, and would even contribute to their safety, they tell us but very little; they do not tell us that, while their slaves are happy, the slaves of some depraved and cruel wretch in their neighborhood may be stimulated to revenge, and thus involve the country in ruin. If we had to legislate only for such gentlemen as are now embraced within my view, a law against robbing the mail would be a disgrace upon the nation; and, as useless, I would tear it from the pages of your statute book; yet sad experience has taught us the necessity of such laws — and honor, justice, and policy teach us the wisdom of legislating to limit the extension of slavery.

In the zeal to draw sectional contrasts, we have been told by one gentleman, that gentlemen from one district of country talk of their morality, while those of another practice it. And the superior liberality has been asserted of southern gentlemen over those of the north, in all contributions to moral institutions, for bible and missionary societies. Sir, I understand too well the pursuit of my purpose, to be decoyed and drawn off into the discussion of a collateral subject* I have no inclination to controvert these assertions of comparative liberality. Although I have no idea that they are founded in fact, yet, because it better suits the object of my present argument, I will, on this occasion, admit them to the fullest extent. And what is the result? Southern gentlemen, by their superior liberality in contributions to moral institutions, justly stand in the first rank, and hold the first place in the brightest page in the history of our country. But turn over this page, and what do you behold? You behold them contributing to teach the doctrines of Christianity in every quarter of the globe. You behold them legislating to secure the ignorance and stupidity of their own slaves! You behold them prescribing, by law, penalties against the man that dares teach a negro to read. Such is the statute law of the state of Virginia. [Mr. Bassett and Mr. Tyler said that there was no such law in Virginia.]

No, said Mr. T., I have mis-spoken myself; I ought to have said, such is the statute law of the state of Georgia. Yes, while we hear of a liberality which civilizes the savages of all countries, and carries the gospel alike to the Hottentot and the Hindoo, it has been reserved for the republican state of Georgia, not content with the Care of its overseers, to legislate to secure the oppression and the ignorance of their slaves. The man who there teaches a negro to read is liable to a criminal prosecution. The dark, benighted beings of all creation profit by our liberality — save those of our own plantations. Where is the missionary who possesses sufficient hardihood to venture a residence to teach the slaves of a plantation? Here is the stain! Here is the stigma! which fastens upon the character of our country; and which, in the appropriate language of the gentleman from Georgia, (Mr. Cobb,) all the waters of the ocean cannot wash out; which seas of blood can only takeaway.

Sir. there is yet another, and an important point of view, in which this