The Future of the Colored Race in America - Being an article in the Presbyterian quarterly review of July, 1862 by William Aikman
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of its method of war; it is the death struggle of a great social
element, for which to be conquered is to be ruined and swept out of existence. No man understood this so well or so soon as the great Nullifier. He was a thinker and a philosopher, and so with great logical consistency he became the early author of the doctrine of slavery as now almost universally held at the South. He startled and shocked the men of his time by his bold positions in respect to that institution, and was far in advance of his time in his assertions of its inherent rightfulness, and the determination not only to terminate, but to extend, strengthen and perpetuate it. He was a nullifier because a slave-holder in principle. The one grew out of, and was a part of the other. The maintenance of an oligarchy was the ultimate end, that rested on slavery, and so "state rights" so called, and the divine right of slavery went hand in hand. This is strikingly evident in the history of the present war. The rapid rise, and the culmination of rebellion in act, was preceded by the new annunciation of these doctrines of Calhoun on slavery. We remember well how strange it sounded, and how startling in the General Assembly of only 1856, when slavery was declared an institution not needing to be defended or apologized for, but to be praised and justified as truly an ordinance of God as marriage, or the filial relation. The church had known no such doctrine before, and then spued it out of her mouth, but it was gravely held and fiercely and impudently avowed. It was followed by secession as a logical consequence. It is very remarkable how rapid was the change in public sentiment. This new doctrine of the rightfulness of slavery swept over the whole Southern States in a few months, |
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