06: Expansion and Sectionalism

According to a <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/" target="_blank">2018 report to the United Nations</a> by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates reducing racial disparities in prison sentences, American judges will send one in three black boys born in 2001 to prison in their lifetimes, compared with one in 17 white boys born the same year.

Enslaved people who dreamed of freedom followed Nat once they heard the code. Since it was illegal for them to escape from plantations, the group did whatever they could to prevent their enslavers from stopping them. This meant Nat’s journey to freedom had now become a revolt or rebellion. In order to succeed, he and the others had to attack anyone who stood in their way.

He had recently called for the federal government to buy George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. In gratitude, a supporter had presented Clay with a fragment of wood from Washington’s coffin. Was it portentous that this object had been presented to him, Clay asked? Was it a sign that the nation founded by Washington was dying? “No, sir, no,” thundered Clay, holding up the relic. “It was a warning voice, coming from the grave to the Congress ... to beware, to pause, to reflect before they lend themselves to any purposes which shall destroy the Union.”

Resolved, That the American Union is the supremacy of the bowie knife, the revolver, the slave-driver’s lash, and lynch law, over freedom of speech, of the press, of conscience, of locomotion, in more than one half of the nation—and the degrading vassalage of the entire North to the accursed Slave Power; that no other Union has existed since the adoption of the United States Constitution; that such a Union is to be resisted, denounced and repudiated, by every lover of liberty, until its utter overthrow shall be consummated; and that, to effect this glorious object, there should be one united shout of <em><q>No Union with Slaveholders, religiously or politically!</q></em>

This, Mr. Chairman, is the monster with whom we are contending. Is he to be overthrown by a grammatical thrust or a verbal criticism? I tell you nay! Sir, we are engaged in one of the deadliest conflicts the world has ever known. We are to deal with slavery as an outlaw, who cares not for grammar, or rhetoric, or logic, or parchment, or the law of the living God, but is the great lawless fiend of the universe, with whom no alliance is to be formed, no peace can be kept, no truce effected for any purpose.

our men live all in one house with their wives &amp; their concubines, &amp; the Mulattos one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children-&amp; every lady tells you who is the father of all the Mulatto children in everybody's household, but those in her own, she seems to think drop from the clouds or pretends so to think-.

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world — enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites — causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty — criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but&nbsp;<em>self-interest</em>.

It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union.

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that <i>"all men are created equal."</i> We now practically read it "all men are created equal, <i>except negroes"</i> When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and <i>foreigners, and Catholics."</i> When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].

In the United States a man builds a house in which to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on; he plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops; he embraces a profession and gives it up; he settles in a place, which he soon afterwards leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics; and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor he finds he has a few days’ vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness. Death at length overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of that complete felicity which forever escapes him.