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The war began, the war went on, this politicians' conspiracy, this slaveholders' rebellion, as it was variously called by those who sought its source, now in the disappointed ambition of the Southern leaders, now in the desperate determination of a slaveholding oligarchy to perpetuate their power, and to secure forever their proprietorship in their "human chattels."
As between Lincoln and Douglas, who together held the controlling hand, the slaveholders preferred Lincoln, against whom they had no personal feeling, while they knew that his policy was no more dangerous to their interests than the other man's, if faithfully adhered to and carried out. On a boat that carried a portion of the audience, including the writer, from Alton to St.
That such are the furious passions of slaveholders, no considerations of personal respect, none for the proprieties of life, none for the honor of our national legislature, none for the character of our country abroad, can restrain the slaveholding members of Congress from the most disgraceful personal encounters on the floor of our nation's legislature smiting their fists in each other's faces, throttling and even kicking and trying to gouge each other that during the session of the Congress just closed, no less than six slaveholders, taking fire at words spoken in debate, have either rushed at each other's throats, or kicked, or struck, or attempted to knock each other down; and that in all these instances, they would doubtless have killed each other, if their friends had not separated them.
The chartered monopoly held by the traders who controlled the United States Bank was not accepted passively by others of the commercial class, who themselves wanted financial engines of the same character. The doctrine of State's rights served the purpose of these excluded capitalists as well as it did that of the slaveholders. The States began a course of reeling out bank charters.
He is referred also to the cool and shocking indifference with which these slaveholders, 'gentlemen' and 'ladies, Reverends, and Honorables, and Excellencies, write and print, and publish and pay, and take money for, and read and circulate, and sanction, such infernal barbarity.
They have grown intimate with vice and blood; they gloat over the wildest illustrations of their soul-damning and earth-polluting business, and are moral pests. Yes; they are a legitimate fruit of slavery; and it is a puzzle to make out a case of greater villainy for them, than for the slaveholders, who make such a class possible.
But, besides the natural fact that the slaveholders wish to retain their property, emancipation is, in their view of it, not only a risk of enormous pecuniary loss, and of their entire social status, but involves elements of personal danger, and above all, disgust to inveterate prejudices, which they will assuredly never encounter.
I do not ask your answer I shall have it in your verdict. From "Speech in Behalf of Stockdale." Indeed, many of the statements we now read of the necessity of the wise governing the weak and ignorant are almost literal reproductions of the arguments advanced by the slaveholders of the South in defence of slavery just preceding the outbreak of the Civil War.
Accustomed to wreak their vengeance on their slaves, indulgence of passion becomes with slaveholders a second law of nature, and, when excited even by their equals, their hot blood brooks neither restraint nor delay; gratification is the first thought prudence generally comes too late, and the slaves see their masters fall a prey to each other, the victims of those very passions which have been engendered and infuriated by the practice of arbitrary rule over them.
Yet the American republic, during its civil war to repress the insurrection of the slaveholders, has spent nominally as large a sum as this every year; and the British Empire in time of profound peace spends half as much annually.
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