Speech #440093701

The States of the South are States in the Union. with all the rights of States. and. though the idea seems to be unpleasautto some gentlemen. "the State of Mississippi has a right to have her vote counted side by side with that of Vermont." The gentleman from Kansas said the other day: The republican party in the moment of victory might have confiscated the large landed estates of those who hld aided the rebellion and divided them into small tracts for the liberated bondsmen. first. as an act of stern justice. second. as an act of peley. on the theory that the freedem to maintain his rights must be the owner of the soil on which he places his feet. What would have been the effect of such a policy? I will not ask what warrant or authority could have been found in the Constitution or laws for sich an act. (for these questions have never bothered some people.) but the effect would have been. not only the emancipation of four millions of hereditary bondsmen. whose fathers were not libertyloving immigrants. fleeing from despotic governments to this boasted land of freedom. but were mostly barbarians seized in Africa and brouht to this continent in British and northern vessels as a part of tat commerce which. against the voice of Virginia. New England wished to prolong as a source of profit. and did prolong to 1808. and which constituted the germ of much of her present wealth. It was. perhaps. the misfortune of the South that a slave ever entered her borders. but I say it was the good fortune of the negro. for it is absolutely certain that nowhere else in the world has lie attained to such an advanced state of civilization as in the South. and. all the lamentations and horrors of our republican friends to the contrary notwithstanding.