15 texts around the institution. If they thought there was no attribute of God that could take the part of the slaveholder, they would not dare to search their Bibles for slaveholding texts. But their sons of the next generation saw an undoubted law of God whitening all their fields with the cotton-bloom. Then the Bible texts became pods that burst with the doctrines of Calhoun and his descendants ; for men search the Scriptures to justify their interest as often as to control their passions * * Deseourtilz, a French Naturalist, was in Charleston in 1798, and heard a Quaker declaiming in the square, to quite a gathering of people, against the enormity of separating and selling some slaves who were exposed there on a platform. The sale went on, and so did the Quaker. But the snake had a full equipment of rattles by the time of Mr. Hoar’s mission. There was an anti-slavery party in Virginia as late as 1832. Worn out tobacco-fields helped it to chew the cud of bitter fancy, as it revolved the sentiments of Jefferson and Mason. An act of emancipation narrowly escaped passing the legislature of that State. Why did it not pass, if the prosecution of slavelabor was hostile to the interest of Virginia ? We have heard that the efforts of anti-slavery men in that State were paralyzed by the commencement of an anti-slavery agitation at the North. Slavery was just on the point of dying out, when the publication of the “Liberator ” infused a new and antagonistic life into its decrepit frame. How far men have to go for nothing, when their prejudices drive! That publication heralded a great awakening of the republican tendency, but the Southern tendency was already pledged to its own laws and obedient to their direction; a “ Liberator” in every town and village of the North could have neither accelerated nor retarded the march of natural laws. Just look at the facts. In 1832, while the legislature of Virginia was discussing laws relative to emancipation, the slaves rose immensely in price. They should have fallen. The discussion itself was in consequence of their being worth so little. Why did they rise ? Did slaveholders give three or four times as much for able-bodied negroes, against their own interest, and to spite the “ Liberator ” ? It was the increasing- demand for slaves, the growing activity of the internal slave- trade, the imperious necessity of slave labor, the prospect of new territory and an expansion of the cotton zone, that caused the
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