SEA
POWER
Our people are decided in the opinion, that it
is necessary for us to take a share in the occupation of the ocean,
and their established habits induce them to require that the sea be
kept open to them, and that that line of policy be pursued, which
will render the use of that element to them as great as possible. I
think it a duty in those entrusted with the administration of their
affairs, to conform themselves to the decided choice of their
constituents; and that therefore, we should, in every instance,
preserve an equality of right to them in the transportation of
commodities, in the right of fishing, and in the other uses of the
sea.
But what will be the consequence? Frequent wars without a doubt
Their property will be violated on the sea, and in foreign ports,
their persons will be insulted, imprisoned, &c., for pretended
debts, contracts, crimes, contra-band, &c., &C These insults
must be resented, even if we had no feelings, yet to prevent their
eternal repetition; or, in other words, our commerce on the ocean
and in other countries, must be paid for by frequent war. The
justest dispositions possible in ourselves, will not secure us
against it. It would be necessary that all other nations were just
also. Justice indeed, on our part, will save us from those wars
which would have been produced by a contrary disposition. But how
can we prevent those produced by the wrongs of other nati6ns? By
putting ourselves in a condition to punish them. Weakness provokes
insult and injury, while a condition to punish, often prevents them.
This reasoning leads to the necessity of some naval force; that
being the only weapon by which we can reach an enemy. I think it to
our interest to punish the first insult; because an insult
unpunished is the parent of many others. We are not, at this moment,
in a condition to do it, but we should put ourselves into it, as
soon as possible. If a war with England should take place, it seems
to me that the first thing necessary would be a resolution to
abandon the carrying trade, because we cannot protect it. Foreign
nations must, in that case, be invited to bring us what we want, and
to take our productions in their own bottoms. |
John
Jay
23 Aug 1785 |
SECESSION
I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable
evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts. Yet when
we consider the mass which opposed the original coalescence; when we
consider that it lay chiefly in the Southern quarter; that the
Legislature have availed themselves of no occasion of allaying it,
but on the contrary, whenever Northern and Southern prejudices have
come into conflict, the latter have been sacrificed and the former
soothed; that the owners of the debt are in the Southern, and the
holders of it in the Northern division; that the anti-federal
champions are now strengthened in argument by the fulfillment of
their predictions; that this has been brought about by the
monarchical federalists themselves, who, having been for the new
government merely as a stepping stone to monarchy, have themselves
adopted the very constructions of the Constitution, of which, when
advocating its acceptance before the tribunal of the people, they
declared it unsusceptible; that the republican federalists who
espoused the same government for its intrinsic merits, are disarmed
of their weapons; that which they denied as prophecy, having now
become true history, who can be sure that these things may not
proselyte the small number which was wanting to place the majority
on the other side? And this is the event at which I tremble, and to
prevent which I consider your continuing at the head of affairs as
of the last importance. The confidence of the whole Union is centred
in you. Your being at the helm will be more than an answer to every
argument which can be used to alarm and lead the people in any
quarter, into violence and secession. North and South will hang
together if they have you to hang on; and if the first correction of
a numerous representation should fail in its effect, your presence
will give time for trying others, not inconsistent with the union
and peace of the States. |
George
Washington
23 May 1792 |
SECESSION
Mr. New showed me your letter on the subject of
the patent, which gave me an opportunity of observing what you said
as to the effect, with you, of public proceedings, and that it was
not unwise now to estimate the separate mass of Virginia and North
Carolina, with a view to their separate existence. It is true that
we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut,
and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as
well as exhausting our strength and subsistence. Their natural
friends, the three other Eastern States join them from a sort of
family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of
the Union, so as to make use of them to govern the whole. This is
not new, it is the old practice of despots; to use a part of the
people to keep the rest in order. And those who have once got an
ascendancy, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the
nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining
their advantage. But our present situation is not a natural one. The
republicans, through every part of the Union, say, that it was the
irresistible influence and popularity of General Washington played
off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to
anti-republican hands, or turned the republicans chosen by the
people into anti-republicans. He delivered it over to his successor
in this state, and very untoward events since, improved with great
artifice, have produced on the public mind the impressions we see.
But still I repeat it, this is not the natural state. Time alone
would bring round an order of things mote correspondent to the
sentiments of our constituents. But are there no events impending,
which will do it within a few months? The crisis with England, the
public and authentic avowal of sentiments hostile to the leading
principles of our Constitution, the prospect of a war, in which we
shall stand alone, land tax, stamp tax, increase of public debt,
etc. Be this as it may, in every free and deliberating society,
there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent
dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must
prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this
party division is necessary to induce each to watch and delate to
the people the proceedings of the other. But if on a temporary
superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission
of the Union, no federal government can ever exist. If to rid
ourselves of the present rule of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we
break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the New England
States alone cut off, will our nature be changed? Are we not men
still to the south of that, and with all the passions of men?
Immediately, we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Virginia party arise
in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be distracted
with the same party spirit. What a game too will the one party have
in their hands, by eternally threatening the other that unless they
do so and so, they will join their northern neighbors. If we reduce
our Union to Virginia and North Carolina, immediately the conflict
will be established between the representatives of these two States,
and they will end by breaking into their simple units. Seeing,
therefore, that an association of men who will not quarrel with one
another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest
confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry; seeing
that we must have somebody to quarrel with, I had rather keep our
New England associates for that purpose, than to see our bickerings
transferred to others. . . If the game runs sometimes against us at
home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have
an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost.
For this is a game where principles are the stake. |
John
Taylor
1 Jun 1798 |
SLAVERY
/ ABOLITION
SIR,-I am very sensible of the honor you
propose to me, of becoming a member of the society for the abolition
of the slave trade. You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see
an abolition, not only of the trade, but of the condition of
slavery; and certainly, nobody will be more willing to encounter
every sacrifice for that object But the influence and information of
the friends to this proposition in France will be far above the need
of my association. I am here as a public servant, and those whom I
serve, having never yet been able to give their voice against the
practice, it is decent for me to avoid too public a demonstration of
my wishes to see it abolished. Without serving the cause here, it
might render me less able to serve it beyond the water. I trust you
will be sensible of the prudence of those motives, therefore, which
govern my conduct on this occasion, and be assured of my wishes for
the success of your undertaking, … |
Warville
12 Feb 1788 |
SLAVERY
/ AND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
… I fear the terms in which I speak of
slavery, and of our constitution, may produce an irritation which
will revolt the minds of our country-men against reformation in
these two articles, and thus do more harm than good. I have asked of
Mr. Madison to sound this matter as far as he can, and, if he thinks
it will not produce that effect, I have then copies enough printed
to give one to each of the young men at the College, and to my
friends in the country. |
James
Monroe
17 Jun 1785 |
SLAVERY
/ AND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
I went through Franklin with enchantment; and
what peculiarly pleased me was, that there was not a sentence from
which it could be conjectured whether it came from north, south,
east or west. At last a whole page of Virginia flashed on me. It was
in the section on the state of parties, and was an apology for the
continuance of slavery among us. However, this circumstance may be
justly palliated, it . . . encumbered a good cause with a
questionable argument. Many readers who would have gone heart and
hand with the author so far, would have flown off in a tangent from
that paragraph. I struck it out. Justify this if you please to those
concerned, and if it cannot be done, say so, and it may still be
re-established. |
James
Madison
8 Sep 1793 |
SLAVERY
/ EMANCIPATION
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your two
favors of the 2d and 22d instant, and to thank you for the pamphlet
covered by the former. You know my subscription to its doctrines;
and as to the mode of emancipation, I am satisfied that that must be
a matter of compromise between the passions, the prejudices, and the
real difficulties which will each have their weight in that
operation. Perhaps the first chapter of this history, which has
begun in St. Domingo, and the next succeeding ones, which will
recount how all the whites were driven from all the other islands,
may prepare our minds for a peaceable accommodation between justice,
policy and necessity; and furnish an answer to the difficult
question, whither shall the colored emigrants go? and the sooner we
put some plan under way, the greater hope there is that it may be
permitted to proceed peaceably to its ultimate effect. But if
something is not done, and done soon, we shall be the murderers of
our own children. The "murmura venturos nautis prudential
ventos" has already reached us; the revolutionary storm, now
sweeping the globe, will be upon us, and happy if we make timely
provision to give it an easy passage over our land. From the present
state of things in Europe and America, the day which begins our
combustion must be near at hand; and only a single spark is wanting
to make that day to-morrow. If we had begun sooner, we might
probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves,
but every day's delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation.
|
St.
George Tucker
28 Aug 1797 |
SLAVERY
/ EMANCIPATION EFFORTS
In 1769, I became a member of the legislature
by the choice of the county in which I live, and so continued until
it was closed by the Revolution. I made one effort in that body for
the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected:
and indeed, during the regal government, nothing liberal could
expect success. Our minds were circumscribed within narrow limits,
by an habitual belief that it was our duty to be subordinate to the
mother country in all matters of government, to direct all our
labors in subservience to her interests, and even to observe a
bigoted intolerance for all religions but hers. The difficulties
with our representatives were of habit and despair, not of
reflection and conviction. Experience soon proved that they could
bring their minds to rights, on the first summons of their
attention. But the King's Council, which acted as another house of
legislature, held their places at will, and were in most humble
obedience to that will: the Governor too, who had a negative on our
laws, held by the same tenure, and with still greater devotedness to
it: and, last of all, the Royal negative closed the last door to
every hope of amelioration. |
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
SLAVERY
/ ENDING THE PRACTICE
The concern you therein express as to the
effect of your pamphlet in America, induces me to trouble you with
some observations on that subject.
From my acquaintance with that country, I think I am able to judge,
with some degree of certainty, of the manner in which it will have
been received. Southward of the Chesapeake, it will find but few
readers concurring with it in sentiment, on the subject of slavery.
From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeake, the bulk of the people
will approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable minority
ready to adopt it in practice; a minority, which for weight and
worth of character, preponderates against the greater number, who
have not the courage to divest their families of a property, which,
however, keeps their conscience unquiet. Northward of the
Chesapeake, you may find, here and there, an opponent to your
doctrine, as you may find, here and there, a robber and murderer;
but in no greater number. In that part of America, there being but
few slaves, they can easily disencumber themselves of them; and
emancipation is put into such a train, that in a few years there
will be no slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find
such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity, as in
Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for
the interesting spectacle of justice, in conflict with avarice and
oppression; a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily
recruits, from the influx into office of young men grown, and
growing up. These have sucked in the principles of liberty, as it
were, with their mother's milk; and it is to them I look with
anxiety to turn the fate of this question. Be not therefore
discouraged. What you have written will do a great deal of good.
|
Dr.
Price
7 Aug 1785 |
SLAVERY
/ EXPOSITION ON THE ISSUES
There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on
the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among
us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual
exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting
despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.
And with what execration should the statesman he loaded, who,
permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of
the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies,
destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the
other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be
any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and
labor for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of his
nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavors to
the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable
condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the
morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a
warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make another
labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a
very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the
liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their
only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these
liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated
but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect
that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that
considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of
the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situanon is among possible
events; that it may becom~ probably by supernatural interference!
The Almighty has no at-tribute which can take side with us in such a
contest. But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this
subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of
history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will
force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already
perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit
of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust,
his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the
auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is
disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the
masters, rather than by their extirpation. |
Notes
on Virginia
1782 |
SLAVERY
/ JEFFERSON'S PLAN TO CONVERT TO FREE TENANT FARMERS
Notwithstanding the discouraging result of
these experiments I am decided on my final return to America to try
this one. I shall endeavor to import as many Germans as I have grown
slaves. I will settle them and my slaves on farms of fifty acres
each, intermingled, and place all on the footing of the metayers
(medietani) of Europe. Their children shall be brought up as others
are in habits of property and foresight, and I have no doubt but
that they will be good citizens. Some of their fathers will be so,
others I suppose will need government; with these all that can be
done is to oblige them to labor as the laboring poor of Europe do,
and to apply to their comfortable subsistence the produce of their
labor, retaining such a moderate portion of it as may be a just
equivalent for the use of the lands they labor and the stocks and
other necessary advances. |
Edward
Bancroft
26 Jan 1788 |
SLAVERY
/ OF AFRICANS COMPARED TO BRITISH SEAMEN
...And has not the British seaman, as much as
the African, been reduced to this bondage by force, in flagrant
violation of his own consent, and of his natural right in his own
person? and with the laborers of England generally, does not the
moral coercion of want subject their will as despotically to that of
their employer, as the physical constraint does the soldier, the
seaman, or the slave?
But do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not
justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people by the
example of another nation committing equal wrongs on their own
subjects. On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to
a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and
political depravity. But I am at present comparing the condition and
degree of suffering to which oppression has reduced the man of one
color, with the condition and degree of suffering to which
oppression has reduced the man of another color; equally condemning
both. |
Thomas
Cooper
(Doctor)
10 Sep 1814 |
SLAVERY
/ VIRGINIA QUAKER EFFORTS TO CREAT TENANT FARMERS
I have deferred answering your letter on the
subject of slaves because you permitted me to do it till a moment of
leisure, and that moment rarely comes, and because, too, I could not
answer you with such a degree of certainty as to merit any notice. I
do not recollect the conversation at Vincennes to which you allude,
but can repeat still on the same ground on which I must have done
then that as far as I can judge from the experiments which have been
made to give liberty to, or rather abandon, persons whose habits
have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children. Many
Quakers in Virginia seated their slaves on their lands as tenants;
they were distant from me, and therefore I cannot be particular in
the details because I never had very particular information. I
cannot say whether they were to pay a rent in money or a share of
the produce, but I remember that the landlord was obliged to plan
their crops for them, to direct all their operations during every
season and according to the weather; but what is more afflicting, he
was obliged to watch them daily and almost constantly to make them
work and even to whip them. A man's moral sense must be unusually
strong if slavery does not make him a thief. He who is permitted by
law to have no property of his own can with difficulty conceive that
property is founded in anything but force. These slaves chose to
steal from their neighbors rather than work; they became public
nuisances and in most instances were reduced to slavery again. But I
will beg of you to make no use of this imperfect information (unless
in common conversation). I shall go to America in the spring and
return in the fall. During my stay in Virginia I shall be in the
neighborhood where many of these trials were made. I will inform
myself very particularly of them and communicate the information to
you.
Besides these, there is an instance since I came away of a young
man (Mr. Mays) who died and gave freedom to all his slaves, about
200; this is about a year ago. I shall know how they have turned
out. |
Edward
Bancroft
26 Jan 1788 |
STATESMANSHIP
AND THE CONGRESS
I will not say that this time, more than all
others, calls for the service of every man; but I will say, there
never was a time when the services of those who possess talents,
integrity, firmness, and sound judgment, were more wanted in
Congress. Some one of that description is particularly wanted to
take the lead in the House of Representatives, to consider the
business of the nation as his own business, to take it up as if he
were singly charged with it, and carry it through. |
Barnabas
Bidwell
5 Jul 1806 |
|
