The Liberator

The Worcester Spy—Senator Preston and Governor Davis.

The last Worcester Spy contains the following strictures upon an article of mine in the Liberator, a week or two since, entitled 'Senator Preston's letter.'

'Senator Preston's Letter. Some men are easily satisfied. Of this number must be accounted our esteemed friend, the editor of the Worcester Spy—since he thinks Mr. Preston's letter a satisfactory explanation of the matter the abolitionists had against him. We fear that he must have looked at this anti-slavery matter through his whig spectacles, and that, too, in the perturbed atmosphere hanging about a well-contested election, when it looked so strangely to him.''

We extract the above from the commencement of an article filling more than a column in the Liberator, to which is attached the initials of Edmund Quincy. We should be very glad to know in what manner the writer has been able to ascertain our thoughts. We certainly have never expressed any such opinions as he imputes to us, either in public or in private, nor aught that would bear such a construction. We have never uttered a word in justification or extenuation of Senator Preston's remarks, whatever they might have been, on the occasion alluded to. Thanks to a pretty good pair of eyes, we are not yet under the necessity of wearing 'spectacles' of any kind, and we would advise those who do, to wipe them up, and look sharp, so as to know what they are about, before they impute opinions to others by name, which they stigmatize as unsound and unpatriotic.

I certainly had no intention of misrepresenting the opinions of the editor of the Spy—and had no means of ascertaining his thoughts except through the expression he made of them in his paper. If I have misunderstood and misrepresented his expressions, I stand ready to make the amende honorable, and am ready to give him any satisfaction that a Quaker can ask and a non-resistant give. The following is the article which gave rise to the remarks to which my friend objects, as it stands in the Spy of November 2nd:

'Correspondence. We referred a few weeks since to the facts which are developed in the following correspondence, that has been handed in for publication. The public will now understand that neither Daniel Webster nor John Davis ever sat in the Senate silent listeners to Col. Preston, threatening 'to hang an abolitionist, should he come into South-Carolina' because Col. Preston never made use of any such menace.' [The italics are those of the Spy.]

If the editor of the Spy will read my remarks again, he will perceive that they do not charge him with 'uttering a word in justification or extenuation of Senator Preston's remarks'—but simply state that he thought 'Mr. Preston's letter a satisfactory explanation of the matter the abolitionists had against him.' Well! does he not think so? If the letter satisfies him that 'Col. Preston never made use of any such menace,' he surely must. The issue which I joined with the editor of the Spy was not that he had endorsed what Mr. Preston said, but that he thought it satisfactory, and a sufficient reply to the reports which had been rife to his disadvantage and that of the Massachusetts Senators. Does he not think it so? If so, he has no just ground for complaining of my simple statement of the fact, learned from his own words. As to the inference I drew from this, that he is a man easily satisfied'—that is a matter of individual opinion, to which my friend, I presume, will not dispute my right.

To what did the denial of Mr. Preston amount? If my readers will refer to the article in question, they will see that I affirmed that the abolitionists had never, to my knowledge, made the charge against Col. Preston which he denies—but that they had made the very charge he himself admits to be true—viz. that if a man who has done a perfectly lawful act, one in which he is sustained by the Constitution of the U. S., is subsequently taken in South Carolina, he should be arrested, tried, and if convicted, hanged—and that not all the governments on earth, including this great general government, should save him from a felon's death. Now what explanation of this does Mr. Preston make? After denying with righteous indignation the accusation that nobody had ever made—and making the enormous assertion that South-Carolina had never been disgraced by a single act of lawless violence—he proceeds to state what he did say, in the following words:

On the occasion referred to, I was speaking of the violation of our laws, by the dissemination of incendiary matter through the Post-Office; and asserted that if any one guilty of this offence were subsequently found within the jurisdiction of South-Carolina, he would assuredly suffer the penalty of the laws.'

In what respect does Mr. Preston's own statement of the matter differ from that the abolitionists have always made? Does the doing of an unlawful and wicked act with the forms of law, make it any less an act of lawless violence? What was 'the incendiary matter disseminated through the Post-Office,' to which this legislation is to apply? Why, the publications of the American A. S. Society—as much incendiary publications as the New Testament and Declaration of Independence! And it seems that a man for dropping one of these publications into the N. Y. Post-Office is to be hanged, (with all the due formalities of trial observed,) if he can be afterwards caught within the jurisdiction of South-Carolina! And this Mr. Preston writes to Mr. Davis as a satisfactory account of his words and of Mr. Davis's silence! Surely he thought abolitionists 'men that might be easily satisfied!'

The fact that Mr. Davis was not present or did not hear this outrageous nullification when it was uttered, is certainly sufficient reason why he did not notice it at the time. But how can he justify himself in keeping silence after he had the treason authenticated under the hand and seal of the utterer? Suppose Mr. Davis had written to Mr. Preston an account of a speech which he (Mr. P.) had not heard, and of which he wished an explanation something to this effect:—' I said that if a man claiming to hold property in man in South-Carolina, shall be afterwards found within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, he shall be arrested, tried by the laws of that State, and if convicted, hanged in spite of all the governments on earth, this general government included;' would three years elapse before the Senator from S. C. would bring it before the public? And would he then produce it as an explanation which might, or might not, be satisfactory to the slaveholders? Would Mr. Davis probably have retained his seat in the Senate any longer than it would require to bring it before them and procure his expulsion? And yet this would be no whit a greater outrage upon common justice and common sense, or a more flagrant violation of the Constitution, than was this speech of Mr. Preston's, on his own showing. And Massachusetts Senators could sit quietly at the same board, and, for aught that appears, on friendly relations with the traitorous braggart! Such is the difference which a few degrees of latitude makes in a man's natural and constitutional rights!—E. Q.