16 emancipation has been going on, and fugitives have been flying to the free States, the census shows that, in the slave States, the slave population has increased infinitely beyond the increase of the free people of color, with all these appendages, in the free States. If you go to the records of pauperism and poverty, what do you find? You find that he is a being infinitely more degraded than the white man. In 1850, in the State of Massachusetts, with a population of over 900,000 white" inhabitants, there were 389 convicts in her penitentiaries, and 47 black convicts out of a negro population of 9,000. In Connecticut, there were 146 white and 30 black convicts in her penitentiary. In New York, you find the same disproportion. The result is, that in Massachusetts there is 1 white convict out of every 2,522 whites, and 1 black convict for every 262 negroes. In New York, there is 1 white convict in 2,056, and 1 black convict in 142. In Virginia, there is 1 -white convict in 5,570, and 1 black convict in 11,600. 1 .do not suppose that these figures present exactly a correct statement in relation to Virginia, for 1 suppose the slaves there are not punished in such a way as to exhibit in prison returns the full result of crime. I presume they are punished, as in South Carolina, in some summary .way of which no special record is kept; but, so far as Massachusetts and New York are concerned, the question is settled beyond all controversy. The rapid increase of population in the ordinary way is looked upon by all writers as one of the strongest evidences of the bodily comfort at least, of the subjects of it. Crime and pauperism are the fruits, not of comfort and independence, but of want and destitution. The fact, that in Massachusetts there is 1 white convict out of 2,522, and 1 black convict out of 262, exhibits a state of things, showing beyond all question that in those regions of boasted freedom the black man is in a sad condition. 1 am sorry, sir, that necessity compels me to speak of the absent Senator from Massachusetts. I do not intend to use his own language, or to be unmindful of what is due to myself, but I have to speak of his facts. What could be the •'bject of the wondrous tirade which we heard from him about freedom ? Does he mean that, in the .state of things which exists in this country, he thinks it desirable to turn loose three mil- hops of Africans? If he does, he means what few people besides himself—few considerate people—would suppose to be practicable. The Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. Wilson,] who is present, has defined his position. He disclaims any. right to interfere with slavery in the States. It is a fair inference, as I have already remarked, that, though he is now restrained by the Consti- tion, he would do if if he had the power; but in that I may do him injustice. The other Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner] has never, I believe, defined his position on this point. He has never said—in. fact the contrary is to be inferred—that the Constitution affords us any guarantee. I suppose, then, (to borrow a manufacturer’s term,) that he belongs to that stripe of the anti-slavery party who deny that the Constitution has guarantied slavery, and who contend that Congress has the power to abolish it, and is in duty bound to exercise the power as soon as it can. This is the doctrine of Garrison, and of some papers which are sent to me every day— among the rest, one called the Radical Abolitionist. If such be the Senator’s views, I can only say that they are utterly impracticable. I shall not waste the time of the Senate in discussing such a scheme. If it is to be done on payment of the value of the slaves, $1,000,000,000 will not pay for them. If they are to be emancipated and sent to Africa,, that sum will not pay the expense of their transportation and maintenance there until they are able to maintain themselves. If the object of that party be to emancipate them, and leave them in the States, it requires no sagacity to see what will be the result. Sir, between the-white man, North and South, and the black man, there is a deep, an impassable fulf. It is as manifest at the North as at the South, n 1847, I traveled through New England and New York. I was ten days in Boston and three weeks in New York; During all that time I never saw a negro at work. It is well known there that a white man will not work with him. This with some people is the objection to allowing slaves to go to Kansas. They say the white man will not work with the negro. If there be any man who in his senses believes that the negro’s condition would be bettered by emancipation now, 1 have never met him, unless he be one of those whom I have seen and heard on this floor. I need not say, what is obvious to everybody who .knows anything about the matter, that his condition would be infinitely worse. If these declamations about freedom, and these commiserations for the poor negro’s condition, have any meaning—if they are to result in anything, I should suppose they wo'uld result in something to better his condition. Now, will his condition be bettered? No man, I think, will rise here in his place and say that it will. But another fruitful subject of declamation— the Senator from Massachusetts spoke largely about it—is, that we send little children to the auction block—that we part husband and wife. I can inform him that this act w’hich he thus justly denounces is as much denunciated in the State of South Carolina as in Massachusetts. Sir, I live in a slave country; I live in a district in which the slave population exceeds the white by two thirds; and yet i affirm here, that I have never known an instance in which a separation has been made between husband and wife,.or, as I have heard, mother and her children. If gentlemen will look at the census, they will see that by far the greater part of the slaveholders own from one to ten slaves. When you come, on the'par- tition of estates, to divide that number between families, there must necessarily be some separation; but as to putting them on the block, and selling them to anybody who may choose to buy, I never heard of it; I never knew it; and I do not believe the popular sentiment in any part of South Carolina would tolerate it for a moment. In this connection I may say that the man Legree, who has been held up as the model of a slaveholder, is no more a representative of the slaveholders of South Carolina, than a Mas-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=