What is the proposition which has produced
in the gentlemen's idea,", such an alarming
apprehension that you are going to undo eve-
rything you have been doing. You have by
one fell swoop manumitted men, women and
children, old and young, firm, infirm and help-
less; those who are as impotent as the child at
the breast, and as incapable of maintaining
themselves. You have left the master in a
condition which imposes upon him the neces-
sity of saying to those who have been brought
into his family, those with whose parents he
has been associated as members of the same
family—you have brought the master to the
absolute necessity of seeing these people per-
ish for the want of food and clothing, or be-
ing at the expense of sustaining them,
Gentlemen have been asked, what are you
to do with those so old as to be incompetent
to maintain themselves, or these women and
children so utterly helpless as to be incapable
of providing for themselves. No answer has
been given. No remedy has been suggested.
Some gentlemen say that the legislature must
provide. The legislature is not to meet until
these people may rot in the streets, if they
are left to starve according to the project of
this convention. They require daily suste-
nance, constant protection from exposure to
the weather. That is the reason suggested
here for conferring this power; and we ask
by what other process these people can be pro-
tected .
I take it for granted it has not been assumed,
though it may be assumed, that the masters
will sooner expend the last cent that they own'
than to allow these people to suffer extinction
either by starvation or exposure. But when
the proposition is offered by the gentleman
from Caroline to do an act which I say, con-
cerning nothing but the public; interest, ought.
to be done, the fear is expressed that it will
benefit the masters; that you are going to do
some service to the masters; that you lire go-
ing to entail slavery upon the servants, is an
apprentice a slave? You apprentice white
people. Are they slaves? Is this process of
universal emancipation to be postponed for
twenty years because minor negroes are to be
put out as apprentices in the same way ex-
actly that white persons are apprenticed? The
very moment a motion comes within sight of
anything like a cent of remuneration, these
gentlemen seem to take alarm, as if the coun-
try was going to be ruined by it, and their fa-
vorite scheme of universal emancipation inter-
fered with or at least delayed. I regret ex-
ceedingly to see such a spirit prevail.
We are about to turn loose upon the community
every minor negro in the State. Un-
educated, unprepared for the condition of free-
dom, with no employment, no business, no
avocation except that in which they must en-
gage under the instruction of white people, as
general laborers, entirely and exclusively ac-
customed to farming operations, thousands |
upon thousands are to be turned loose. To
do what? I say the very best thing you can
do with them is to place them under the guar-
dianship, and direction, and guidance, and in-
struction of white persons, who can teach
them how to take care of themselves. No ;
you cannot do that; their master will get
some benefit from it. The gentleman from
Baltimore city seems to have the utterly idle
view that indenting him for ten years makes
him aslave; that if you indent him from seven
to twenty-one years of age, you make him a
slave. We have had indentures all along;
and who ever heard of an indented appren-
tice being considered a slave? How does it
interfere with the rigid principle of universal
emancipation for masters to have the prefer-
ence in the guardianship of these minors?
1 say again that I hope this exhibition of
apprehension which seems to be entertained
by gentlemen lest a dollar of compensation
should be given to the masters who are stripped
of their properly, and not only that, but made
to meet the expense of sustaining those who
are impotent, those who must be sustained by
them or perish, those for whom their friends
do not profess to make provision, those who are
here utterly neglected after being turned into
the streets—the apprehension lest they should
receive a dollar in return. I hope it does not
reveal the feelings of all the gentlemen of the
majority here, towards those upon whom their
policy has brought ruin. I saw yesterday a
letter from a gentleman, a warm supporter
of the government, who was utterly ruin-
ed; and there are others in the same pre-
dicament; ruined by a sudden blow upon the
part of the body selected fair the protection of
the people of the State in their persons, their
properly and their liberties, by a sudden blow
inflicted at their hands, which in one sentence
strikes down every dollars' worth of property
they have. Is it to be a matter of regret that
incidentally you should to some small extent
remunerate these people, incidentally, under
the operation of an act positively and actually
useful to those who are to be emancipated by
this body? I again appeal to the justice and
equity and conscience of the majority of this
house, not to carry out their ultra doctrines
which I say manifest more a determined
spirit of hostility to the slave owner, than &
desire to benefit the slave.
Mr. PURNELL. My judgment inclines me
to favor the proposition of the gentleman from
Caroline (Mr. Todd.)
Mr. STOCKBRIDGE. I rise lo a point of order.
1 did not wish to interrupt the gentleman from
Kent (Mr. Chambers) during the progress of
his lecture. But I submit that the amend-
ment I proposed is the only thing now before
the house, and that the merits of the propo-
sition of the gentleman from Caroline (Mr.
Todd) are not now under consideration.
Mr. CHAMBERS. I was merely answering |
