tify any man having a thousand wives, if he
chose to try it.
The gentlemen from St. Mary's and from
Charles (Messrs. Billingsley and Edelen)
opened their arguments in a very doleful
strain. They said the case was prejudged
and predetermined, and that they had no
hope of making any impression upon the op-
position. Now, I approach the subject with
a great deal more of hope; I expect to make
an impression upon those very gentlemen. If
they do not see the fruits of it immediately, I
have no doubt they will in the future think
of what I say. it will be like bread cast upon
the waters; we will get a return after many
days. I have no doubt' they will live to thank
the rough radical from Cecil county for some
ideas he will suggest to them to-night.
The gentleman from Charles (Mr. Edelen)
referred to the testimony of slaveholders both
living and dying of their attachment and de-
votion to the cause of slavery. I thought I
would look up some of that same evidence,
and as the most illustrious slaveholder, I se-
lected George Washington—" first in war,
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his
countrymen." In a letter to Mr. John F.
Mercer, dated September 9, 1786, he said :
"I never mean, unless some particular
circumstances should compel me to it, to
possess another slave by purchase; it being
among my first wishes to see some plan
adopted by which slavery in this country
may be abolished by law."
In another letter to Robert Morris, dated
April 12, 1786, he says:
"I hope it will not be conceived from these
observations, that it is my wish to hold the
unhappy people who are the subject of this
letter in slavery. I can only say that there is
not a main living who wishes more sincerely
than I do to see a plan adopted for the aboli-
tion of it. But there is only one proper and
effectual mode by which it can be accom-
plished, and that is by legislative authority ;
and this, as fair as my suffrage will go, shall
never be wanting."
In a letter to Lafayette, he says:
" The benevolence of your heart, my dear
Marquis, is so conspicuous on all occasions
that I never wonder at any fresh proof of it.
But your late parchase of an estate, with a
view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a
generous and noble proof of your humanity.
Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself
generally into the minds of the people of this
country,"
Passing over a number of other letters from
this distinguished statesmen and soldier, I
will read an extract from the last will and
testament of George Washington. He says:
"Upon the decease of my wife, it is my
will and desire that all the slaves which I
hold in my own right shall receive their free-
dom. To emancipate them during her life
would, though earnestly wished by me, be at- |
tended with such insuperable difficulties, on
account of their intermixture by marriage with
the dower negroes, as to excite the most pain-
ful sensation, if not disagrecable consequences
from the latter, while both descriptions are
in the occupancy of the same proprietor, it
not being in my power, under the tenure by
which the dower negroes are held, to manu-
mit them."
Mrs. Washington, when she came to learn
the facts, immediately freed all the slaves.
Next to the testimony of General Wash-
ington, I adduce that of Thomas Jefferson.
In his notes on Virginia, he says :
"There must doubtless be an unhappy in-
fluence on the manners of our people, pro-
duced by the existence of slavery among us.
The whole commerce between master and
slave is a perpetual exercise of the most
boisterous passions—the most unremitting
despotism on the one part, and degrading
submission on the other. Our children see
this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an
imitative animal. This quality is the germ
of all education in him. From his cradle to
his grave he is learning to do what he sees
others do. If a parent could find no motive,
either in his philanthropy or self-love, for
restraining the intemperance of passion to-
wards his slave, it should always be a suffi-
cient one that his child is present. But
generally it is not sufficient. The parent
storms; the child looks on, catches the linaments
of wrath, puts on the same airs in the
circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose rein to
tine worst passions; and thus nursed, educated,
and daily exercised id tyranny, cannot but
be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.
The man must be a prodigy who can retain
his manners and morals undepraved by such
circumstances. And with what execration
should the statesman be regarded, who, per-
mitting one half the citizens thus to trample
on the rights of the other, transforms those
into despots and these into enemies; destroys
the inorals of one part, and the amor patricae
of the other; for if a slave can have a conn-
try in this world, it must be in any other
in preference to that in which he was born
to live and labor for another; in which he
must lock up the faculties of his nature, con-
tribute, as far as depends on his individual
endeavors, to the evanishment of the human
race, or entail his own miserable condition
on the endless generations proceeding from
him.
"With the morals of a people their in-
dustry is also destroyed; for in a warm
climate no man will labor for himself who
can make another labor for him. This is so
true that of the proprietors of slaves a very
small proportion indeed are ever seen to
labor. And can the liberties of a nation be
secure when we have removed their only firm
basis—a conviction in the minds of the people
that these liberties are the gift of God? that |
