Slavery Ordained of God | Page 4

the
South. May I thus give the mildest rebuke to your inconsistency of
conduct? (Much good-natured excitement.)
Sir, may we know who are the descendants of the New England
kidnappers? What is their wealth? Why, here you are, all around me.
You, gentlemen, made the best of that bargain. And you have kept
every dollar of your money from the charity of emancipating the slave.
You have left us, unaided, to give millions. Will you now come to our
help? Will you give dollar for dollar to equalize our loss? [Here many
voices cried out, "Yes, yes, we will."]
Yes, yes? Then pour out your millions. Good. I may thank you
personally. My own emancipated slaves would to-day be worth greatly
more than $20,000. Will you give me back $10,000? Good. I need it
now.
I recommend to you, sirs, to find out your advocates of
_murder_,--your owners of stock in under-ground railroads,--your
Sabbath-breakers for money. I particularly urge you to find Legree,
who whipped Uncle Tom to death. He is a Northern _gentleman_,
although having a somewhat Southern name. Now, sir, you know the
Assembly was embarrassed all yesterday by the inquiry how the
Northern churches may find their absent members, and what to do with
them. Here then, sir, is a chance for you. Send a committee up Red
River. You may find Legree to be a Garrison, Phillips, Smith, or
runaway husband from some Abby Kelly. [Here Rev. Mr. Smith
protested against Legree being proved to be a Smith. Great laughter.
[Footnote: This gentleman was soon after made a D.D., and I think in
part for that witticism.]] I move that you bring him back to lecture on
the cuteness there is in leaving a Northern church, going South,
changing his name, buying slaves, and calculating, without _guessing_,
what the profit is of killing a negro with inhuman labor above the gain
of treating him with kindness.
I have little to say of spirit-rappers, women's-rights conventionists,
Bloomers, cruel husbands, or hen-pecked. But, if we may believe your
own serious as well as caricature writers, you have things up here of
which we down South know very little indeed. Sir, we have no young
Bloomers, with hat to one side, cigar in mouth, and cane tapping the

boot, striding up to a mincing young gentleman with long curls,
attenuated waist, and soft velvet face,--the boy-lady to say, "May I see
you home, sir?" and the lady-boy to reply, "I thank ye--no; pa will send
the carriage." Sir, we of the South don't understand your
women's-rights conventions. Women have their wrongs. "The Song of
the Shirt,"--Charlotte Elizabeth,--many, many laws,--tell her wrongs.
But your convention ladies despise the Bible. Yes, sir; and we of the
South are afraid _of them_, and for you. When women despise the
Bible, what next? _Paris,--then the City of the Great Salt Lake,--then
Sodom, before_ and after the Dead Sea. Oh, sir, if slavery tends in any
way to give the honour of chivalry to Southern young gentlemen
towards ladies, and the exquisite delicacy and heavenly integrity and
love to Southern maid and matron, it has then a glorious blessing with
its curse.
Sir, your inquisitorial committee, and the North so far as represented by
them, (a small fraction, I know,) have, I take it, caught a Tartar this
time. Boys say with us, and everywhere, I _reckon_, "You worry my
dog, and I'll worry your cat." Sir, it is just simply a _fixed fact: the
South will not submit to these questions_. No, not for an instant. We
will not permit you to approach us at all. If we are morbidly sensitive,
you have made us so. But you are directly and grossly violating the
Constitution of the Presbyterian Church. The book forbids you to put
such questions; the book forbids _you to begin discipline_; the book
forbids your sending this committee to help common fame bear
testimony against us; the book guards the honour of our humblest
member, minister, church, presbytery, against all this
impertinently-inquisitorial action. Have you a _prosecutor_, with his
definite charge and witnesses? Have you _Common Fame_, with her
specified charges and witnesses? Have you a request from the South
that you send a committee to inquire into slanders? No. Then hands off.
As gentlemen you may ask us these questions,--we will answer you.
But, ecclesiastically, you cannot speak in this matter. You have no
power to move as you propose.
I beg leave to say, just here, that Tennessee [Footnote: At that time I
resided in Tennessee.] will be more calm under this movement than any
other slave-region. Tennessee has been ever high above the storm,
North and South,--especially we of the mountains. Tennessee!--"there

she is,--look at her,"--binding this Union together like a great, long,
broad, deep stone,--more splendid than all