Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War by Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
page 18 of 48 (37%)
page 18 of 48 (37%)
|
the ante-bellum days. Judge the Southern owner by the rule and not the
exception. As well judge a town by its halt, maimed, blind, diseased and lawless citizens, as the slave owners by occasional acts of oppression to be found on the plantations. But it was the "Down east" Yankee overseer who was cruel--not the master. It was the African in New England who was denied religious teaching, and even baptism. There was no sympathy there, to quote from a writer, for the poor creatures transplanted from their native sunny clime, dying by hundreds from disease on the bleak Northern shores. It was merely a question of profit and loss. They were sold to the South as fast as they could be shipped. Even when the great hue and cry for freedom led the Northern Senators to legislate for the cessation of foreign slavery in 1808, these great philanthropists rushed over some 5,000 slaves to sell to the South before the limited date could come around. Many prominent rich men of New England made their money by this traffic, then pulled a long face of condemnation for the Southern planter, whose money had been paid over to swell the Northern coffers. IT IS WORTHY OF NOTE THAT THE SOUTH NEVER OWNED OR SAILED A SLAVE SHIP. In 1861 Mr. C.C. Glay, of Alabama, made a bitter speech in the United States Senate. Part of his arraignment was that not a decade had passed that the North had not persecuted the South on account of her slaves. "You denied us Christian communion because you could not endure slave-holding. You refused us permission to sojourn, or even pass through the North with our property. You refused us any share of the lands acquired mainly by our diplomacy and blood and treasure. You robbed us of our property and refused to restore it." |
|