Slavery Ordained of God | Page 5

in the temple of Baalbec or
Solomon. Tennessee!--there she is, in her calm valour. I will not lower
her by calling her unconquerable, for she has never been assailed; but I
call her ever-victorious. King's Mountain,--her pioneer
battles:--Talladega, Emucfau, Horse-shoe, New Orleans, San Jacinto,
Monterey, the Valley of Mexico. Jackson represented her well in his
chivalry from South Carolina,--his fiery courage from Virginia and
Kentucky,--all tempered by Scotch-Irish Presbyterian prudence from
Tennessee. We, in his spirit, have looked on this storm for years
untroubled. Yes, Jackson's old bones rattled in their grave when that
infamous disunion convention met in Nashville, and its members
turned pale and fled aghast. Yes, Tennessee, in her mighty million,
feels secure; and, in her perfect preparation to discuss this question,
politically, ecclesiastically, morally, metaphysically, or physically, with
the extreme North or South, she is willing and able to persuade others
to be calm. In this connection, I wish to say, for the South to the North,
and to the world, that we have no fears from our slave-population.
There might be a momentary insurrection and bloodshed; but
destruction to the black man would be inevitable. The Greeks and
Romans controlled immense masses of white slaves,--many of them as
intelligent as their lords. Schoolmasters, fabulists, and poets were
slaves. Athens, with her thirty thousand freemen, governed half a
million of bondmen. Single Roman patricians owned thirty thousand. If,
then, the phalanx and the legion mastered such slaves for ages, when
battle was physical force of man to man, how certain it is that infantry,
cavalry, and artillery could hold in bondage millions of Africans for a
thousand years!
But, dear brethren, our Southern philanthropists do not seek to have
this unending bondage; Oh, no, no. And I earnestly entreat you to
"stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." Assume a masterly
inactivity, and you will behold all you desire and pray for,--you will see
America liberated from the curse of slavery.
The great question of the world is, WHAT IS TO BE THE FUTURE
OF THE AMERICAN SLAVE?--WHAT IS TO BE THE FUTURE OF
THE AMERICAN MASTER? The following _extract from the
"Charleston Mercury"_ gives my view of the subject with great and

condensed particularity:--
"Married, Thursday, 26th inst., the Hon. Cushing Kewang, Secretary of
State of the United States, to Laura, daughter of Paul Coligny,
Vice-President of the United States, and one of our noblest Huguenot
families. We learn that this distinguished gentleman, with his bride,
will visit his father, the Emperor of China, at his summer palace, in
Tartary, north of Pekin, and return to the Vice-President's Tea Pavilion,
on Cooper River, ere the meeting of Congress." The editor of the
"Mercury" goes on to say: "This marriage in high life is only one of
many which have signalized that immense emigration from
Christianized China during the last seventy-five years, whereby
Charleston has a population of 1,250,000, and the State of South
Carolina over 5,000,000,--an emigration which has wonderfully
harmonized with the great exodus of the negro race to Africa." [Some
gentleman here requested to know of Dr. Ross the date of the
"Charleston Mercury" recording this marriage. The doctor replied, "The
date is 27th May, 1953, exactly one hundred years from this day."
Great laughter.]
Sir, this is a dream; but it is not all a dream. No, I verily believe you
have there the Gordian knot of slavery untied; you have there the
solution of the problem; you have there the curtain up, and the last
scene in the last act of the great drama of Ham.
I am satisfied with the tendencies of things. I stand on the
mountain-peak above the clouds. I see, far beyond the storm, the calm
sea and blue sky; I see the Canaan of the African. I like to stand there
on the Nebo of his exodus, and look across, not the Jordan, but the
Atlantic. I see the African crossing as certainly as if I gazed upon the
ocean divided by a great wind, and piled up in walls of green glittering
glass on either hand, the dry ground, the marching host, and the pillar
of cloud and of fire. I look over upon the Niger, black with death to the
white man, instinct with life to the children of Ham. There is the black
man's home. Oh, how strange that you of the North see not how you
degrade him when you keep him here! You will not let him vote; you
will not let him rise to honors or social equality; you will not let him
hold a pew in your churches. Send him away, then; tell him, begone.
Be urgent, like the Egyptians: send him out of this land. _There_, in his
fatherland, he will exhibit his own type of Christianity.