The Liberator

AN INCENDIARY ARTICLE.

The Editor of the Columbia, S. C. Telescope gives vent to his wrath in the following style. It is certainly very amusing to hear the South talk of the country's 'growing fat upon the labor of southern slaves'! and boasting of her 'noble line of ancestry,' and of living 'in an age of enlightened freedom,' while 2,000,000 of human beings are held in bondage in her very midst! We venture to assert, that no article has ever appeared in the Liberator, partaking so much of an incendiary character as the following.

We do not intend to have our property wrested from us by any power on earth—we have slaves, and we intend to keep them. That in our efforts to protect and continue this peculiar domestic institution, and in hurling back our vengeance at those who are now, and who in future may attempt to uproot and destroy it, there may not be a mighty revolution in our government, we cannot say. The south may be driven to desperation upon this subject by the unholy interference of deluded and misguided fanatics; by men blinded by a false and sickly philanthropy, to apply the least opprobrious epithet to the motives by which they are actuated. That this great confederacy may be broken up to its deepest foundations by attempts to reform and remodel our domestic policy, we cannot say we entertain no fears. But we repeat it again and again, that we have slaves, and we will keep them, and as sure as we are a free people, will roll a dreadful and desolating tide of wrath upon the heads of those who dare come amongst us for the purpose of laying a finger's weight upon that species of our property. It is ours by law and justice—we have inherited it from our ancestors—it is secured to us sacred and inviolate by the great bond of this Union, the Constitution of the United States—it has become so interwoven with the prosperity of the south, that to break it up, would be opening a channel for the flowing out of the very vitals of our country, and blighting all the rich prospects of glory and greatness that lie before us. It is notorious that many of the most intelligent men of the north and east have long since declared that their country daily grew fat upon the labor of southern slaves, and that if not directly, yet indirectly, they were immensely benefitted by the system of southern slavery. How this may be is too plain for argument. Yet there is a wild fanaticism at work to effect the overthrow of the system, although in its fall would go down the fortunes of the south, and to a great extent those of the north and east—in a word, the whole fabric of our Union, in one awful ruin. What then ought to be done? What measures ought to be taken to secure the safety of our prosperity and our lives? We answer, let us be vigilant and watchful to the last degree over all the movements of our enemies, both at home and abroad. Let us declare through the public journals of our country, that the question of slavery is not, and shall not be open to discussion—that the system is deep rooted amongst us, and must remain forever—that the very moment any private individual attempts to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, and the necessity of putting measures into operation to secure us from them, in the same moment his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon the dung-hill. We are freemen, sprung from a noble stock of freemen, able to boast as noble a line of ancestry as ever graced this earth—we have burning in our bosoms the spirit of freemen—live in an age of enlightened freedom, and in a country blessed with its privileges—under a government that has pledged itself to protect us in the enjoyment of our peculiar domestic institutions in peace, and undisturbed. We hope for a long continuance of these high privileges, and have now to love, cherish and defend property, liberty, wives and children, the right to manage our own matters in our own way, and what is equally dear with all the rest, the inestimable right of dying upon our own soil, around our own firesides, in struggling to put down all those who may attempt to infringe, attack or violate any of these sacred and inestimable privileges.