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Famous Americans of Recent Times by James Parton
page 57 of 570 (10%)
the Abolitionists. Mr. Clay gave him an outline of what he thought the
pamphlet ought to be.

"The great aim and object of your tract should be to arouse
the laboring classes in the Free States against abolition.
Depict the consequences to them of immediate abolition. The
slaves, being free, would be dispersed throughout the Union;
they would enter into competition with the free laborer,
with the American, the Irish, the German; reduce his wages;
be confounded with him, and affect his moral and social
standing. And as the ultras go for both abolition and
amalgamation, show that their object is to unite in marriage
the laboring white man and the laboring black man, and to
reduce the white laboring man to the despised and degraded
condition of the black man.

"I would show their opposition to colonization. Show its
humane, religious, and patriotic aims; that they are to
separate those whom God has separated. Why do the
Abolitionists oppose colonization? To keep and amalgamate
together the two races, in violation of God's will, and to
keep the blacks here, that they may interfere with, degrade,
and debase the laboring whites. Show that the British nation
is co-operating with the Abolitionists, for the purpose of
dissolving the Union, etc."

This is so very absurd, that, if we did not know it to express Mr.
Clay's habitual feeling at that time, we should be compelled to see in
it, not Henry Clay, but the candidate for the Presidency.

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