13 other side, if you ever become convinced, as I doubt not you will, that this institution does not stand by the rights of nature nor by the will of God, you yourselves will be willing to put a limit to it. You have only departed because your philosophy has led you away. Sir, I leave you with the argument. And now, Mr. President, in conclusion, I would ask Senators what they find in the Republican party that is so repulsive to them that they must lay hold of the pillars of this Union, and demolish and destroy the noblest Government that has ever existed among men ? For what? Not certainly for any evil we have done ■ for, as I said to start with, you are more prosperous now than you ever were before. What are our principles? Our principles are only these: we hold that you shall limit slavery. Believing it wrong, believing it inconsistent with the best interests of the people, we demand that it shall be limited; and this limitation is not hard upon you, because you have land enough for a population as large as Europe, and century after century must roll away before you can occupy what you now have. The next thing which we hold, and which I have not time to discuss, is the great principle of the homestead bill—a measure that will be up, I trust, this session, and which I shall ask to press through, as the greatest measure I know of to mould in the right direction the Territories belonging to this nation; to build up a free yeomanry capable of maintaining an independent republican Government forever. We demand, also, that there shall be a protection to our own labor against the pauper labor of Europe. We have always contended for it, but you have always stricken it down. These are the measures, and these are the only measures, I know of that the great Republican party now stand forth as the advocates of. Is there anything repulsive or wrong about them ? You may not agree to them ; you may differ as to our views ; but is there anything in them that should make traitors of us, that should lead a man to pull down the pillars of his Government, and bury it up, in case we succeed ? Sir, these principles for which we contend are as old as the Government itself. They stand upon the very foundation of those who framed your Constitution. They are rational and right; they are the concessions that ought to be made to Northern labor against you, who have monepolized four millions of compulsory labor and uncompensated labor, in competition with us. There is one thing more that I will say before I sit down; but what I am now about to propose is not part and parcel of the Republican platform, that I know of. There is in these United States a race of men who are poor, weak, uninfluential, incapable of taking care of themselves. I mean the free negroes, who are despised by all, repudiated by all; outcasts upon the face of the earth, without any fault of theirs that I know of; but they are the victims of a deep-rooted prejudice, and I do not stand here to argue whether that prejudice be right or wrong. I know such to be the fact. It is there immovable. It is perfectly impossible that these two races can inhabit the same place, and be prosperous and happy. I see that this species of population are just as abhorrent to the Southern States, and perhaps more so, than to the North ; many of those States are now, as •I think, passing most unj ust laws to drive these men off or to subject them to slavery; they are flocking into the free States, and we have objections to them. Now, the proposition is, that this great Government owes it to justice, owes it to those individuals, owes it to itself and to the free white population of the nation, to provide a means whereby this class of unfortunate men may emigrate to some congenial clime, where they may be maintained, to the mutual benefit of all, both white and black. This will insure a separation of the races. Let them go into the tropics. There, I understand, are vast tracts of the most fertile and inviting land, in a climate perfectly congenial to that class of men, where the negro will be predominant; where his nature seems to be improved, and all his faculties, both mental and physical, are fully developed, and where the white man degenerates in the same proportion as the black man prospers. Let them go there ; let them be separated ; it is easy to do it. I understand that negotiations may easily be effected with many of the Central American States, by which they will take these people, and confer upon them homesteads, confer upon them great privileges, if they will settle there. They are so easy of access that, a nucleus being formed, they will go of themselves and relieve us of the burden. They will be so far removed from us that they cannot form a disturbing element in our political economy. The far-reaching sagacity of Thomas Jefferson and others suggested this plan. Nobody that I know of has found a better. I understand, too, that in these regions, to which I would let them go, there is no prejudice against them. All colors seem there to live in common, and they would be glad that these men should go among them. I say that I hope this great principle will be engrafted into our platform as a fundamental article of our faith, for I hold that the Government that fails to defend and seeure any such dependent class of freemen in the possession of life, liberty, and happiness, is, to that extent, a tyranny and despotism. I hope, after that is done, to hear no more about negro equality or anything of that kind. Sir, we shall be as glad to rid ourselves of these people, if we can do it consistently with justice, as anybody else can. We will not, however, perpetrate injustice against them. We will not drive them out,
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