Daily Richmond Times

questions of ethics with the enthusiast, who denounces as "a curse" an institution established by the command of God himself, and who aspires to teach a morality purer than that of our Redeemer.

We plant ourselves upon the constitution itself and rest our claims to protection upon its solemn guarantees. We desire no more power for slavery than is conferred by it; we ask no greater security.

The querulous complaints which the fanatics make continually against the aggressive spirit of "the slave power," are calculated only to deceive their deluded followers. "The slave power" dictated the terms of the present Union, and gave up voluntarily that authority and control, which the agitators say it is now striving to lay hold on. The surrender of the Northwestern territory, under the ordinance of 1787, rendered it impossible that "the slave power" should ever after have the ascendency in the Union. We ask for no superiority; but equality of rights, privileges and immunities, we not only ask for, but are resolved to have.

There can be nothing more monstrous than the power claimed for congress to exclude slavery from the territories. Congress has no powers except those conferred on it by the express terms of the constitution, or such as are necessary to carry into effect those expressly granted. There is no clause in that instrument conferring upon congress authority to legislate upon the subject of slavery, in the territories or elsewhere; nor will it be pretended that the exercise of this power is necessary to carry into effect any expressly granted. To touch the subject at all, then, is a palpable and direct infraction of the constitution. The safeguards, which were thrown around the liberties of the people by the wisdom of those who framed the constitution, are demolished. Nothing is so simple as republican government, founded upon a written organic law, fixed and inflexible, to which all legislative action must conform. To this invention America owes its greatness and its liberty. It is, however, in vain to talk of the supremacy of the people, idle to teach that they are the source of all power, unless the law which fixes the authority of the legislature shall be written and unchangeable. But allow the unauthorized action of the legislature to-day, to be given as a reason for the exercise of the same power to-morrow, and the rights of the people will be already usurped and their liberties in danger. Such, precisely, is the condition of things at this moment in the congress of the United States. The only shadow of justification they pretend to for the prohibition of slavery in the territories is, that the Missouri compromise, as it is termed, excluded it from all territory north of 36 deg 30 min. of N. latitude. Without even a pretence of constitutional right for this action, they now urge it as a precedent giving authority to violate that compromise and to exclude slavery from all territory belonging to the United States. If we point to the letter of the constitution as the only source of authority, they point with triumph to the Missouri compromise. If we then insist upon the limits fixed by that agreement, they laugh at the credulity which attempts to define authority derived from precedent alone. Even now, by virtue of this single precedent, congress claims the power of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, and in all the forts and arsenals belonging to the federal government in the South, as well as to prohibit the transportation and sale of slaves from one state to another. So we are not left to speculate upon the probable consequences of submitting to the unauthorized exercise of power in a given case. The fruits of it are plain; they are ruinous and never-ending aggressions.

The loyalty and devotion of Virginia to the Union are known to the world. They are written upon the enduring pages of our country's history. She was amongst the first to strike for constitutional liberty: she will be the last to abandon it. The great compromises upon which it rests, she offered; and she herself suffered the chief sacrifices to secure its permanency—she has given with a liberality, which at this day can scarcely be reconciled with the dictates of wisdom. In all things touching the honor and glory of the confederacy, her hand has never been closed, except upon the sword.

She cannot submit to this usurpation of authority; this violation of her rights; this wanton degradation. Let us insist that the question be settled now and forever. Let us have no palliatives, no deceptive truces, no delays which only give strength to the spirit of aggression; no compromises which leave the question open for future adjustment. Let it be settled as to every foot of territory belonging to the United States, or which may hereafter be hers, by a compact as solemn and inviolable as the constitution itself. Anything short of this is certain ruin to the south—it is annihilation. If a conflict must come, let it come now. We are strong in reality—stronger still in comparison with those whose hands are already raised against us. A few more years of acquiescence and supineness will bring about a necessity of an absolute submission to every wrong which oppression or contempt might heap upon our country.

Submission to the proposed action of congress is a virtual surrender of the entire South to the African race. If slavery is to be confined to its present limits, with a girdle of free states surrounding us, from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, a very few years, in a nation's history, will be sufficient to drive the white man beyond its limits. The sturdy laborer, the stay and support of every community, would soon leave the country swarming with negroes, for a residence in another land. The master, too, would presently follow, finding it impossible to remain. This view is no matter of conjecture merely: a simple rule of arithmetic will fix the fact and the time of its consummation, taking as a basis of the calculation the census of the last thirty years. Such are the fruits which the northern fanaticism, viewed in its most favorable aspect, must produce to the South.

The consequences to the North will be little less disastrous. The great American staples must be cut short—the foreign commerce sustained by them will disappear from the seaports of our enterprising neighbors—their manufactures, should they be continued, must find a market abroad, in unprotected competition with the labor of Europe. The thrift and prosperity which now so pre-eminently characterize the working classes of New England and the North would vanish away; and the mechanic and laborer would discover, when too late, that, whilst striking the manacles of legal slavery from the hands of the African, he had riveted upon the necks of his own children the bondage of necessity, which no earthly power could ever again remove.

England's experiment with her West India colonies has proved a failure: this is admitted by all. It has not elevated the character of the negro man, nor has it contributed to his happiness. But the fatal consequences which are certainly to result to England from that stupendous folly, will, in the round of years, take from that colossal power the supremacy of the seas. It has struck a deadly blow at her colonial trade; and this was one of the chief elements of her maritime superiority. Shall examples of this sort teach us nothing? Is a blind fanaticism to overwhelm all things in its course?

This, I solemnly believe, is the most favourable view which can be taken of the subject, if Congress persists in its present course of aggression towards us. But the wildest visionary would hardly expect to see these results brought peaceably about. Humanity itself must shudder at the bare contemplation of the slaughter most certainly to follow a prosecution of these iniquitous schemes. We cannot leave our homes: the ashes of Washington, Henry and Jefferson, may not be desecrated by the tread of the African's foot. The men of the South will not remain passive: the sword will not rest in the scabbard, whilst fanaticism is erecting at our hearth-stones an altar, upon which the victims of sacrifice are to be our daughters and our wives.

The almost unanimous sentiment of the slaveholding country upon this subject is not the result of political agitation seeking for party ascendancy. It is the spontaneous outburst of a whole people, upon the conviction that their dearest rights are menaced. Party prejudices and animosities are buried; every tenet of faith, and shade of political opinion, agree perfectly; and the novel spectacle is presented of eight millions of people, actuated by and obedient to a single determination, arising as one man to stay the hand of usurpation and wrong.

Let us trust that our brethren at the North will understand, before it is forever too late, that a feeling of self preservation, and not one of silly bravado, actuates our course. Let us hope still that our common sufferings and common triumphs, the memories of the past and the bright hopes of the future which we offer to all mankind, may stay the madness which is precipitating us into a ruin from which no human power can ever grant us even the hope of rescue.

December 3, 1849.

JOHN B. FLOYD.