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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 406 Print image (106K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 406 Print image (106K) |
| Untitled 11/7/99 9:52 PM really did notching which can be considered final as to these questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed frcm a government ty States to something like a despotic central government, with pcwer to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,— an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political idea, —no general assert of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with, itself, and render the rights of the States corpatible with the sacred rights of hurron nature. The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the pcwer to protect thonselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book. Slavery, like all other great systons of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its CWQ continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the neater, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is iirpossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal government be armed with despotic pcwer, to blot out State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to rake our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franch! —a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for Ms protection. Cne of the invaluable corpensations of the late Rebellion is the highly instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic governments, no republic is safe http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/Afro-Amer/dugl210.txt Page 12 of 17 |