Speech #460045314

The Senator now says that it is only a portion of these people who are so deluded and deceived. and that is the ignorant and weak. but that tle intelligent and influential colored people of his State are not so deceived. But is there any considerable body of the free citizens of North Carolina who have lived there these last ten years. or indeed ever since the war. in such abject ignorance and poverty and degradation. in spite of all this improvement hold out and proffered and tendered to them. that they even do not know their opportunities there. and are induced by some such wild statements as the Senator from Minnesota made here a year agoso ignorant themselves that they cannot read. many of them I supposeto take up their line of march without money enough to get further than the city of Washington. and endure all the hardships and privations and toils and disappointments and sufferings attendant upon such travel nder a delusion that they can better their condition in Indiana or any other State ? Last year when an attempt to stop emigration was made the trouble was that they were Soing to Kansas. Now. some of them seem to have been attracted to ndiana. The law which moves them is a law that my friend from North Carolina no more than myself can have any control over. A man in the United States of common intelligence will seek to better his condition as long as he has life and energy and hope. and no considerable body of men in any State will take tip their homes and their household gods and move to another State or plant a colony in the unsettled regions of the West unless they are impelled by a rational and intelligent expectation that they are going to better their comdition. and now. whether that expectation arises in North Carolina from one motive. in Tennessee- from another. in Massachusetts from another. in Georgia from another. it is the law that governs the American people. and the only stay to it is to attempt in our domestic policy. each of us within the borders of our own State. to make life there so attractive. so useful to those who enjoy it. that they will have no temptation to seek a home elsewhere. If my friend from North Carolina will take that in kindness fron me. and look into the philosophy of the law which governs this subject. and address himself to such means as will make North Carolina and all its latent energies and hidden wealth tend to develop and tend to present attractive opportunities to those who live there. and to those who do not live there to go and make a home there. and to make them find when they are there. no matter whether thley come from abolition Massachusetts or from any other State. that they go to a home where they are welcome. and that the opportunities and facilities that exist in North Carolina are theirs in common and free enjoyment with all the citizens of North Carolina. there will be no complaint that men are emigrating in any body from that State. I do not mean to charge at all that there is any lack of this in North Carolina. The Senator from North Carolina shall not provoke me into an attack upon his State or its institutions. or its people or their treatment of one another.