In thus presenting a sketch of the progress of those causes which led to the Southern revolt, it will be seen that slavery, though made an occasion, was not, in reality, the cause of the war. Antislavery was of no serious consequence, and had no positive influence, until politicians, at a late period, seized upon it as an instrument of agitation; and they could not have done so to any mischievous effect, except for an alleged diversity of interests between the sections, involving the question of political power. Wise and patriotic citizens for a long time kept those interests at the proper balance, or the passions which were thus stimulated under just control. As those great men passed away, self-seeking and ambitious demagogues, the pest of republics, disturbed the equilibrium, and were able, at length, to plunge the country into that worst of all public calamities, civil war. The question of morals had as little as possible to do with the result. Philanthropy might have sighed, and fanaticism have howled for centuries in vain, but for the hope of office and the desire of public plunder, on the part of men who were neither philanthropists nor fanatics.⁽¹⁾

It is preposterous to suggest that "hundreds of thousands of lives" were expended in the so-called "Civil War" to overturn Chief Justice Taney's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford regarding the political status of American Blacks. In fact, one is hard-pressed to find many Northern spokesmen -- even among the most ardent Abolitionists -- attempting to dispute the non-citizenship of the Negro. This is because securing the Territories for free White labor, and not citizenship for Negroes, was always the real issue in the minds of the Free-Soilers and the later Republicans. The Free Soil argument was that the presence of slavery was an embarrassment to American democracy and that it impeded the "manifest destiny" of the United States to extend a great economic empire of White freedom across the continent and throughout the world. In relating why all future Territories should be closed to slavery and why California should be admitted as a free State, David Wilmot, author of the Wilmot Proviso, said: "The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent. Let us keep what remains for ourselves, and our children -- for the emigrant that seeks our shores -- for the poor man, that wealth shall oppress -- for the free white laborer, who shall desire to hew him out a home of happiness and peace, on the distant shores of the mighty Pacific."⁽²⁾ Such was also the substance of a three-hour speech in Congress in 1850 delivered by William H. Seward, who was also a member of the Free Soil party, and who would later serve in Abraham Lincoln's presidential cabinet as Secretary of State:

The population of the United States consists of natives of Caucasian origin, and exotics of the same derivation. The native mass readily assimilates to itself and absorbs the exotic, and these constitute one homogenous people. The African race, bond and free, and the aborigines, savage and civilised, being incapable of such assimilation and absorption, remain distinct, and, owing to their peculiar condition, constitute inferior masses, and may be regarded as accidental if not disturbing political forces. The ruling homogenous family, planted at first on the Atlantic shore, and following an obvious law, is seen rapidly and continually spreading itself westward, year by year, subduing the wilderness and the prairie, and thus extending this great political community, which, as fast as it advances, breaks into distinct States for municipal purposes only, while the whole constitutes one entire, contiguous, and compact nation.⁽³⁾

It is clear that Seward did not view the Negro, whether slave or free, to be a part of this "great political community" which he foresaw spreading itself across the continent. In his "Irrepressible Conflict" speech, delivered at Rochester, New York on 25 October 1858, Seward stated, "The interests of the white race demand the ultimate emancipation of all men. The white man needs this continent to labor upon.... He must and will have it."⁽⁴⁾ Two years later, his views had not changed: "The great fact is now fully realized that the African race here is a foreign and feeble element, like the Indians, incapable of assimilation,... and that it is a pitiful exotic, unwisely and unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native vineyard."⁽⁵⁾ According to Republican Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, the solution to the "Negro problem" was therefore not only the abolition of slavery, but the removal of the Negro race entirely from this country:

The Senator from Illinois [Douglas] and my collegue [Pugh] have said that we Black Republicans were advocates of negro equality, and that we wanted to build up a black government. Sir, it will be one of the most blessed ideas of the times, if it shall come to this, that we will make inducements to every free black among us to find his home in a more congenial climate in Central America or Lower Mexico, and we will be divested of every one of them; and then, endowed with the splendid domain that we shall get, we will adopt a homestead policy, and we will invite the poor, the destitute, industrious white man from every clime under heaven, to come in here and make his fortune. So, sir, we will build up a nation, renovated by this process, of white laboring men.⁽⁶⁾

Modern readers may be prone to misinterpret Lincoln's frequent attacks on the "slave dynasty" as an expression of an opposition to slavery on moral grounds, but such is not the case. As noted by Roy Basler, Lincoln "barely mentioned slavery before 1854"⁽⁷⁾ -- the year that the Republican party was born. There were other issues to which Lincoln was vastly more committed than a mere opposition to slavery, and the latter was clearly viewed by him as a means to an end. From the beginning of his political career until his death, Lincoln was "always a Whig in politics"⁽⁸⁾ and therefore had "an unswerving fidelity to the party of Henry Clay and to Clay's American System, the program of internal improvements, protective tariff, and centralized banking."⁽⁹⁾ While campaigning for the State legislature in 1832, he said, "My politics can be briefly stated. I am in favor of the internal improvement system and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles."⁽¹⁰⁾ Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, he consistently opposed the advocates of free-trade -- most of whom were Southern Democrats -- and "made more speeches on that subject [the protective tariff] than any other."⁽¹¹⁾ "Honest Abe" was nominated for the Presidency in 1860, not because of any personal antipathy to slavery, but because he was considered "a stout champion of protection"⁽¹²⁾ by Northern industrial interests who saw in the Republican party the prospect of a return to their former favored status of the late 1820s and early 1830s. In fact, the tariff plank had been added to the Chicago platform nearly exclusively to cater to Pennsylvania, without whose support Lincoln would never have been elected.⁽¹³⁾ As pointed out by the Philadelphia North American: "The people have elected Abraham Lincoln President of the United States.... Pennsylvania, particularly, demanded that the principle of protecting American industries should be recognized and avowed.... [S]lavery was not the dominating idea of the Presidential contest, as has been assumed...."⁽¹⁴⁾ A similar statement appeared in the Philadelphia Public Ledger: "The most potent influence that caused many Northern men to aid the Republican party was the tariff question. Manufacturers and miners believed the Democratic party prejudiced to their protection; and therefore had gone over to the Republicans."⁽¹⁵⁾
         Lincoln's political worldview, which "tied economic development to strong centralized national authority,"⁽¹⁶⁾ was nothing less than the old Federalism of Alexander Hamilton in a new form. It is in this economic context that his opposition to the alleged expansion of slavery into the Territories must be understood. Responding to Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech of 16 June 1858, Stephen Douglas said:

...Mr. Lincoln asserts, as a fundamental principle of this government, that there must be uniformity in the local laws and domestic institutions of each and all the States of the Union; and he therefore invites all the non-slaveholding States to band together, organize as one body, and make war upon slavery in Kentucky, upon slavery in Virginia, upon the Carolinas, upon slavery in all of the slaveholding States in this Union, and to persevere in that war until it shall be exterminated. He then notifies the slaveholding States to stand together as a unit and make an aggressive war upon the Free States of this Union with a view of establishing slavery in them all; of forcing it upon Illinois, of forcing it upon New York, upon New England, and upon every other Free State, and that they shall keep up the warfare until it has been formally established in them all. In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the Free States against the Slave States,—a war of extermination,—to be continued relentlessly until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the States shall either become free or become slave....
         The framers of the Constitution well understood that each locality, having separate and distinct interests, required separate and distinct laws, domestic institutions, and police regulations adapted to its own wants and its own condition; and they acted on the presumption, also, that these laws and institutions would be as diversified and as dissimilar as the States would be numerous, and that no two would be precisely alike, because the interests of no two would be precisely the same. Hence I assert that the great fundamental principle which underlies our complex system of State and Federal Governments contemplated diversity and dissimilarity in the local institutions and domestic affairs of each and every State then in the Union, or thereafter to be admitted into the confederacy. I therefore conceive that my friend, Mr. Lincoln, has totally misapprehended the great principles upon which our government rests. Uniformity in local and domestic affairs would be destructive of State rights, of State sovereignty, of personal liberty and personal freedom. Uniformity is the parent of despotism the world over, not only in politics, but in religion. Wherever the doctrine of uniformity is proclaimed, that all the States must be free or all slave, that all labor must be white or all black, that all the citizens of the different States must have the same privileges or be governed by the same regulations, you have destroyed the greatest safeguard which our institutions have thrown around the rights of the citizen.
         How could this uniformity be accomplished, if it was desirable and possible? There is but one mode in which it could be obtained, and that must be by abolishing the State Legislatures, blotting out State sovereignty, merging the rights and sovereignty of the States in one consolidated empire, and vesting Congress with the plenary power to make all the police regulations, domestic and local laws, uniform throughout the limits of the Republic. When you shall have done this, you will have uniformity. Then the States will all be slave or all be free; then negroes will vote everywhere or nowhere; then you will have a Maine liquor law in every State or none; then you will have uniformity in all things local and domestic, by the authority of the Federal Government. But when you attain that uniformity, you will have converted these thirty-two sovereign, independent States into one consolidated empire, with the uniformity of disposition reigning triumphant throughout the length and breadth of the land.⁽¹⁷⁾

A month later, Douglas added:

Mr. Lincoln and myself differ radically and totally on the fundamental principles of this Government. He goes for consolidation, for uniformity in our local institutions, for blotting out State rights and State sovereignty, and consolidating all the power in the Federal Government, for converting these thirty-two sovereign States into one Empire, and making uniformity throughout the length and breadth of the land. On the other hand, I go for maintaining the authority of the Federal Government within the limits marked out by the Constitution, and then for maintaining and preserving the sovereignty of each and all of the States of the Union, in order that each State may regulate and adopt its own local institutions in its own way, without interference from any power whatsoever. Thus you find there is a distinct issue of principles — principles irreconcilable — between Mr. Lincoln and myself. He goes for consolidation and uniformity in our Government. I go for maintaining the confederation of the sovereign States under the Constitution, as our fathers made it, leaving each State at liberty to manage its own affairs and own internal institutions.⁽¹⁸⁾

Dominated by the old Jeffersonian republicanism, which stressed the nature of the Union as a compact between sovereign States,⁽¹⁹⁾ and committed to the philosophy of free trade and anti-protectionism,⁽²⁰⁾ the South as a section traditionally stood in the way of this consolidationist agenda. In the mind of Lincoln and other former Whigs who formed the backbone of the new Republican party, it was therefore imperative that Southern political power be minimized and contained. Lincoln was willing that slavery as an existing institution should be left unmolested and he was strongly in favor of enforcing the fugitive slave laws: "When [Southerners] remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives.... I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."⁽²¹⁾ On another occasion, he said, "[A]ll the States have the right to do exactly as they please about their domestic relations, including that of slavery...." However, he was adamant upon "restricting it from the new Territories,"⁽²²⁾ thus making it impossible for additional slave States to be admitted to the Union.
         The subject of the tariff, and its important role in bringing on the War Between the States, is beyond the scope of this essay. It will be sufficient to note at present that Lincoln's real concern was for pushing his political agenda, not for the alleged plight of the Southern Negro. In fact, his public statements regarding that race revealed that his views were no different than that of Free-Soilism, which sought to confine the Negroes to the South so as not to compete with White labor in the Territories:

What I insist upon is, that the new Territories shall be kept free from [slavery] while in the territorial condition. Judge Douglas assumes that we have no interest in them -- that we have no right whatever to interfere. I think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have.... Now irrespective of the moral aspect of this question as to whether there is a right or wrong in enslaving a negro, I am still in favor of our new Territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home -- may find some spot where they can better their condition -- where they can settle upon new soil and better their condition in life. I am in favor of this not merely (I must say it here as I have elsewhere) for our own people who are born amongst us, but as an outlet for free white people every where, the world over (emphasis in original).⁽²³⁾

In an address delivered at Springfield, Illinois on 26 June 1857, Lincoln openly declared himself in favor of racial segregation and the eventual deportation of the Blacks back to their native Africa:

A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together.... Such separation, if ever affected at all, must be affected by colonization.... The enterprise is a difficult one, but "where there is a will there is a way"; and what colonization needs now is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time, favorable to, or at least not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.⁽²⁴⁾

This was not an isolated statement on Lincoln's part. Indeed, he had much more to say along these lines:

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope -- as I think there is -- there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one of them in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.⁽²⁵⁾

         While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.⁽²⁶⁾

In response to Stephen Douglas on 18 September 1858, Lincoln was very frank in saying, "I am not in favor of negro citizenship... Now my opinion is that the different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States if they choose. The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power. If the State of Illinois had that power I should be opposed to the exercise of it."⁽²⁷⁾ Less than five months prior to delivering the final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln addressed a delegation of free Blacks at the Executive Mansion with these words:

...[W]hy... should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave the country? This is, perhaps, the first question for consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.
         You here are freemen, I suppose... but even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys.... Owing to the existence of the two races on this continent, I need not recount to you the effects upon white men growing out of the institution of slavery.
         I believe in its general evil effects on the white race. See our present condition -- the country engaged in war -- our white men cutting one another's throats -- none knowing how far it will extend -- and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other.... It is better for us both therefore to be separated....⁽²⁸⁾

The issuance of Lincoln's Proclamation brought no change in his position:

I have urged the colonization of the negroes, and I shall continue. My Emancipation Proclamation was linked with this plan. There is no room for two distinct races of white men in America, much less for two distinct races of whites and blacks.
         I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the negro into our social and political life as our equal....
         Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the negro and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood. This he can never do here. We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed of, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.⁽²⁹⁾

In his autobiography, Benjamin Butler referred to a conversation he had with Lincoln in early April 1865 in which the latter said, "I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes." Butler suggested that the Blacks be shipped down to dig the Panama Canal, to which suggestion Lincoln replied, "There is meat in that, General Butler, there is meat in that; but how will it affect our foreign relations?"⁽³⁰⁾ He then suggested that Butler present the plan in writing to Secretary Seward to obtain the latter's assistance in formulating the details. However, an assassin's bullet less than two weeks later squelched any further discussion of these plans for the deportation of America's Blacks.
         As we have already seen, Lincoln was certainly not the only Northern leader who believed the Negro was inferior to the White man. Like Seward, who believed that the African race was "a foreign and feeble element... incapable of assimilation," Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, one of the leading agitators for Abolitionism, wrote of his first sight of Negro slaves, "My worst preconception of their appearance and their ignorance did not fall as low as their actual stupidity... They appear to be nothing more than moving masses of flesh unendowed with anything of intelligence above the brutes."⁽³¹⁾ William Tecumseh Sherman, who would later achieve notoriety for his destructive "March to the Sea," likewise believed that "all the Congresses on earth can't make the negro anything else than what he is; he must be subject to the white man, or he must amalgamate or be destroyed. Two such races cannot live in harmony, save as master and slave."⁽³²⁾ These men were merely voicing a universal racial prejudice which no one at that time, with the possible exception of a handful of fanatics, disputed.

It behooves us now to examine the extravagant charges which the anti-slavery agitators brought against the Southern slaveholders and which have since been written into the history books. As mentioned before, the aversion of modern Americans to the alleged plight of slaves in the old South has been derived from over two hundred years of Abolitionist propaganda. Even before the Nineteenth Century, the Northern press was rife with horrific descriptions of the alleged maltreatment of the Negroes by their aristocratic masters. In the Pelham Papers, published in Connecticut in 1796, it was asserted that the slaves were treated "like brutes" and that "they are bought and sold; they are fed or kept hungry; they are clothed, or reduced to nakedness; they are beaten, turned out to the fury of the elements, and torn from their dearest connections, with as little remorse as if they were beasts of the field" (emphasis in original). This publication even made the outrageous assertion that "if they were good for food, the probability is that the power of destroying their lives would be enjoyed by their owners as fully as it is over the lives of their cattle" (emphasis in original).⁽³³⁾
         The organization of Northern Abolitionism in the 1830s produced a plethora of literature ingeniously designed to play upon the emotions of the reader and to take advantage of the general ignorance of Southern institutions. The year following Weld's ground-breaking compilation, American Slavery As It Is, Richard Hildeth's purported history of Southern social life entitled Despotism in America was published in Boston. In this inflammatory work, the author claimed the following:

The Bible has been proscribed at the South, as an incendiary publication; a book not fit for slaves to read or hear. In some parts of the country the catechism is looked upon with almost equal suspicion; and many masters forbid their slaves to hear any preacher, black or white, since they consider religion upon the plantation as quite out of place, a thing dangerous to the master's authority, and therefore not to be endured in the slave....
         The slaves are regarded not merely as animals, but as animals of the wildest and most ferocious character. They are thought to be like tigers, trained to draw the plough, whom nothing but fear, the whip, and constant watchfulness, keep at all in subjection, and who if left to themselves would quickly recover their savage natures, and find no enjoyment except to reek in blood.⁽³⁴⁾

In his short history of the English colonies, published in Boston after the war, Henry Cabot Lodge wrote:

The negroes in South Carolina were helplessly degraded, rarely baptized or married, lived like animals, their condition of complete barbarism — the slaves were grievously overworked....
         The slaves of the South were not allowed to have a dog. They were coarsely clothed and fed upon meal and water sweetened with molasses and even punished with barbarity....
         If a Bible should be left in a negro cabin, the colporteur would be ushered to Heaven from the lowest limb of a tree on the nearest hill.⁽³⁵⁾

In conducting their "research," modern American historians rely heavily upon such fanciful accounts as these to continue the tradition of vilifying antebellum Southern society. For example, in the popular Time-Life Civil War series, William C. Davis wrote:

Born into bondage, very likely sold at least once during the course of his or her lifetime, a slave normally began to work in the fields by the age of 12. From that point on, overwork was his daily portion....
         The majority of slaves were fed poorly; many subsisted chiefly on a "hog and hominy" diet, which consisted of a peck of corn and about three pounds of fatty salted meat a week. They were generally clothed in shabby homespun or in cheap fabrics known as "Negro cloth," which were manufactured in Northern or English spinning mills. Children wore only shirts and went shoeless even in winter.
         From six to 12 slaves were quartered in each leaky, drafty, dirt-floored one-room shack.... What medical care slaves received was primitive at best. Malaria, yellow fever, cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid, typhus, tetanus and pneumonia took terrible tolls. Many slaves were afflicted with worms, dysentery and rotten teeth. Fewer than four out of 100 lived to be 60 years of age. Slaves were kept in a state of fear by punishment and the threat of punishment. They were required to show abject humility when they addressed whites: They had to bow their heads and lower their gaze. No wonder that slaves -- even those who received relatively good treatment -- yearned for freedom.⁽³⁶⁾

Accompanying this horrific, yet undocumented, account are the photographs of four slaves -- two middle-aged males, an elderly male, and a female. All four of these people were obviously well-fed and in perfect health, showing absolutely no sign of the poor diet, manifold diseases, or even the rotten teeth declared to be so common by the author. The same characteristics may be found in the photographs and illustrations offered over the next eight pages of the same book, including a period painting of a Christmas ball enjoyed by slave men and women dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos.⁽³⁷⁾ On one page is found a photograph of a dozen slave cabins with the notable features of raised wooden floors and chimneys.⁽³⁸⁾ Furthermore, all of the children shown in this latter photograph are not only well-fed, but also fully clothed. This same phenomenon is blatantly apparent in nearly all the pictorial histories of slavery that are published today;⁽³⁹⁾ only in rare instances is any actual evidence offered to substantiate the alleged atrocities.
         The truth is that the abominable treatment of slaves described above was a rarity in the predominantly Christian South, and was, in fact, against the law. Commenting on the civil protection granted to slaves by law in South Carolina, Judge John Belton O'Neall of the State supreme court said:

Although slaves, by the Act of 1740, are declared to be chattels personal, yet they are also, in our law, considered as persons with many rights and liabilities, civil and criminal. The right of protection which would belong to a slave, as a human being, is, by the law of slavery, transferred to his master. A master may protect the person of his slave from injury, by repelling force with force, or by action, and in some cases by indictment. Any injury done to the person of his slave, he may redress by action of trespass vi et armis, without laying the injury done, with a per quod servitum amisit, and this even though he may have hired the slave to another.
         By the Act of 1821, the murder of a slave is declared to be felony, without the benefit of clergy; and by the same Act, to kill any slave, on sudden heat or passion, subjects the offender, on conviction, to a fine of not exceeding $500, and imprisonment not exceeding six months....
         The Act of 1841 makes the unlawful whipping or beating of any slave, without sufficient provocation by word or act, a misdemeanor; and subjects the offender, on conviction, to imprisonment not exceeding six months, and a fine not exceeding $500.⁽⁴⁰⁾

The Georgia slave law of 1815 stated:

Any owner of a slave, who shall cruelly beat such slave or slaves by unnecessary or excessive whipping; by withholding proper food and nourishment; by requiring greater labour from such slave or slaves than he, or she, or they may be able to perform; by not affording proper clothing, whereby the health of such slave or slaves may be injured or impaired; every such owner or owners of slaves shall, upon sufficient information being laid before the grand jury, be by said grand jury presented; whereupon it shall be the duty of the attorney or solicitor-general to prosecute such owner or owners for misdemeanor; who, on conviction, shall be sentenced to pay a fine, or imprisonment in the county jail, or both, at the discretion of the court.
         From and after the passing of this Act, it shall be the duty of the inferior courts of the several counties in this State, on receiving information on oath, of any infirm slave or slaves, in a suffering condition, from the neglect of the owner or owners of said slave or slaves, to make particular inquiries into the situation of such slave or slaves, and render such relief as they, in their discretion, shall think fit. The said courts may, and are hereby authorised to, sue for and recover from the owner or owners of such slave or slaves, in any court having jurisdiction of the same, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.
         Any person who shall maliciously dismember, or deprive a slave of his life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offense had been committed on a free white person, and on the life proof, except in case of insurrection by said slave, and unless such death should happen by accident in giving such slave moderate correction.⁽⁴¹⁾

The Louisiana law relating to slaves was as follows:

Every owner shall be held to give his slaves the quantity of provisions hereinafter specified -- to wit, one barrel of Indian corn, or the equivalent thereof in rice, beans, or other grain, and a pint of salt; and to deliver the same to the slaves in kind, every month, and never in money, under a penalty of a fine of ten dollars for every offence. The slave who shall not have, on the property of his owner, a lot of ground to cultivate on his own account, shall be entitled to receive from the said owner one linen shirt and pantaloons for the summer, and a linen and woolen great coat and pantaloons for the winter.
         As for the hours of work and rest which are to be assigned to slaves in summer, the old usage of the territory shall be adhered to: to wit, the slave shall be allowed half an hour for breakfast during the whole year; from the first of May to the first day of November, they shall be allowed two hours for dinner; and from the first day of November to the first say of May, one hour and a half for dinner.⁽⁴²⁾

The constitution of Texas stated:

They [the legislature] shall have full power to pass laws, which will oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity, to provide for them necessary food and clothing, to abstain from all injuries to them, extending to life or limb; and, in the case of their neglect or refusal to comply with the directions of such laws, to have such slave or slaves taken from their owner, and sold for the benefit of such owner or owners. They may pass laws to prevent slaves from being brought into this State as merchandise only.
         In the prosecution of slaves for the crimes of a higher grade than petit larceny, the Legislature shall have no power to deprive them of an impartial trial by jury.
         Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted, in case the like offence had been committed upon a free white person, and on the like proof, except in case of insurrection of such slave.⁽⁴³⁾

Slaves in the South were generally viewed as members of the families to whom they belonged and were the recipients of a truly humanitarian social security from cradle to grave. If nothing else, they were considered valuable assets to the plantation economy and, having paid an average of $1,500 in hard cash for a single male slave,⁽⁴⁴⁾ a planter was not likely to abuse his investment. In addition, the mental picture painted above of downtrodden and humiliated slaves "yearning for freedom" is much closer to fantasy than fact:

The negroes were perfectly contented with their lot. In general, they were not only happy in their condition, but proud of it. Their hardships were such as are inherent in the state of those who labor at the will of others for their daily bread. On the other hand, they were nursed in sickness, and cared for in old age. If any individual among them displayed superior abilities or qualities, he could easily obtain his freedom if he desired it. There were many free negroes in each of the slave States, and not a few who were prosperous in business, had acquired no inconsiderable possessions, and held persons of their own race as slaves. To the whole South, at least, the tender mercies which would disturb this state of things seemed cruel; but their people chiefly resented any such interference, because it was unjust to them, as being in violation of the laws of the land.⁽⁴⁵⁾

         The negro slave was a highly valued member of the body politic; a tiller of the soil, whose services could be counted on when the crop was pitched, and a laborer who furnished to all his fellows, young and old, sick and well, a more liberal supply of the necessaries of life than was ever granted to any other laboring class in any other place or any other age. And in what the Economists call the distribution of the wealth that was produced by the negro's labor and the skill of the master who guided and restrained him, the share the master took was small indeed compared with what the Captains of Industry took in the free society of the same day. Compared with the share those Captains take now, the modest share taken by the masters was what the magnates of to-day would scorn to consider. The negro lived, too, in cheerful ignorance of the ills for which he has been so much pitied. One is startled now to hear the cheerful whistle or the loud outburst of song from a negro that once was heard on every hand, night and day. Nor was his attitude one of mere resignation to his lot. That it was one of hearty goodwill to the masters was conclusively shown during the war between the States. A distinguished Northern writer has lately invited attention to the indisputable fact that the negroes could have ended the war during any one day or night that it lasted. And the kindly attitude of the negro to the master was shown not negatively only, not by forbearance only. Not only did a vast majority of them stay at their posts, working to feed and watching to protect the families of the absent soldiers -- when all the able-bodied white men were absent soldiers -- but after their emancipation ten thousand examples occurred of respectful and grateful and even generous conduct to their late masters for one instance where a revengeful or a reproachful or even disrespectful demonstration was made. Of the few survivors of those who stood in the relation of master and slave, a considerable number still maintain relations of strong and often tender friendship. John Stuart Mill worshipped liberty and detested slavery, but he confessed that the goodwill of the slaves to the master was to him inexplicable.⁽⁴⁶⁾

It should be remembered that Northern anti-slavery books and novels were generally compiled and written by people who had never seen for themselves the atrocities they described with such vivid detail. George Lunt noted that "very few of those who thus drew upon their imaginations for their descriptions and illustrations had ever stepped an inch over Mason and Dixon's line.... When they discoursed upon this subject they dilated upon what might have been, in other nations and other times, as if it were applicable to our own citizens and our own day."⁽⁴⁷⁾ The testimony of eye-witnesses was quite different from that of these fanatical visionaries. Kenneth Stampp, by no means a pro-Southern historian, wrote, "Visitors often registered surprise at the social intimacy that existed between masters and slaves in certain instances."⁽⁴⁸⁾ For example, James S. Buckingham, an Abolitionist from Great Britain who toured the Southern States in 1839, stated:

...[T]he prejudice of color is not nearly so strong in the South as in the North. It is not at all uncommon to see the black slaves of both sexes, shake hands with white people when they meet, and interchange friendly personal inquiries; but at the North I do not remember to have witnessed this once; and neither in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia would white persons generally like to be seen shaking hands and talking familiarly with blacks on the streets.⁽⁴⁹⁾

In his book entitled The Secession War in America, published in London during the war, Tal P. Shaffner included the following letter of Major-General John Quitman, a native of New York living in Mississippi in 1822, to his father:

The mansions of the planters are thrown open to all comers and goers free of charge.... I am now writing from one of these old mansions, and I can give you no better notion of life at the South than by describing the routine of a day. The owner is the widow of a Virginia gentleman of distinction -- a brave officer who died in the public service during the last war with Great Britain....
         This excellent lady is not rich, merely independent; but by thrifty housewifery, and a good dairy and garden, she contrives to dispense the most liberal hospitality. Her slaves appear to be, in a manner, free, yet are obedient and polite, and the farm is well worked. With all her gayety of disposition and fondness for the young, she is truly pious; and in her own apartments, every night, she has family prayers with her slaves; one or more of them being often called on to sing and pray. When a minister visits the house, which happens very frequently, prayers night and morning are always said; and on occasions the whole household and the guests assemble in the parlor; chairs are provided for the servants. They are married by a clergyman of their own color; and a sumptuous supper is always prepared. On public holidays they have dinners equal to an Ohio barbecue; and Christmas, for a week or ten days, is a protracted festival for the blacks. They are a happy, careless, unreflecting, good-natured race; who left to themselves would degenerate into drones or brutes; but, subjected to wholesome restraint and stimulus, become the best and most contented of laborers. They are strongly attached to "old massa" and "old missus;" but their devotion to "young massa" and "young missus," amounts to enthusiasm. They have great family pride, and are the most arrant coxcombs and aristocrats in the world. At a wedding I witnessed here last Saturday evening, where some one hundred and fifty negroes were assembled -- many being invited guests -- I heard a number of them addressed as governors, generals, judges, and doctors (the titles of their masters); and a spruce, tight-set darkey, who waits on me in town, was called "Major Quitman." The "colored ladies" are invariably Miss Joneses, Miss Smiths, or some such title. They are exceedingly pompous and ceremonious; gloved and highly perfumed. The "gentlemen" sport canes, ruffles, and jewelry; wear boots and spurs; affect crape on their hats, and carry huge segars. The belles wear gaudy colors, "tote" their fans with the air of Spanish senoritas; and never stir out, though black as the ace of spades, without their parasols.
         In short, these "niggers," as you call them, are the happiest people I have ever seen; and some of them, in form, features, and movements, are real sultanas. So far from being fed on "salted cottonseed," as we used to believe in Ohio, they are oily, sleek, bountifully fed, well clothed, well taken care of; and one hears them at all times whistling and singing cheerfully at their work....
         Compared with the ague-smitten and suffering settlers that you and I have seen in Ohio, or the sickly and starved operatives we read of in factories and in mines, these Southern slaves are indeed to be envied. They are treated with great humanity and kindness.⁽⁵⁰⁾

Ironically, the most devastating rebuttal of Abolitionist anti-slavery propaganda to be published in the Nineteenth Century was written by one of their own number -- Nehemiah Adams of Boston, who toured the South for three months in 1854. Instead of the expected scenes of cowing slaves, whose humanity was being crushed by cruel bondage, what he found was a well-ordered society in which the Negroes were mainly content, well-cared for by their masters, and even evangelized.⁽⁵¹⁾ In his book, A Southside View of Slavery, Adams described the legal protection enjoyed by the Southern slaves:

Pauperism is prevented by slavery. This idea is absurd, no doubt, in the apprehension of many at the north, who think that slaves are, as a matter of course, paupers. Nothing can be more untrue.
         Every slave has an inalienable claim in law upon his owner for support for the whole of life. He can not be thrust into an almshouse, he can not become a vagrant, he can not beg his living, he can not be wholly neglected when he is old and decrepit.
         I saw a white-headed negro at the door of his cabin on a gentleman's estate, who had done no work for ten years. He enjoys all the privileges of the plantation, garden, and orchard; is clothed and fed as carefully as though he were useful. On asking him his age, he said he thought he "must be nigh a hundred"; that he was a servant to a gentleman in the army "when Washington fit Cornwallis and took him at Little York."
         At a place called Harris's Neck, Georgia, there is a servant who has been confined to his bed with rheumatism thirty years, and no invalid has more reason to be grateful for attention and kindness.
         Going into the office of a physician and surgeon, I accidentally saw the leg of a black man which had just been amputated for an ulcer. The patient will be a charge upon his owner for life. An action at law may be brought against one who does not provide a comfortable support for his servants.⁽⁵²⁾

In regions where slavery was no longer a profitable enterprise, and in States where manumission was made legally difficult, if not impossible, many individual planters felt "they were involved in a regime which they could not control, but which required them to carry on, more for the sake of their slaves than for their own welfare."⁽⁵³⁾ Even when manumission was permitted, the slaveowner was not released from responsibility for the welfare of his former slaves. According to a law passed by the General Assembly of Virginia on 17 December 1792, "It shall be lawful for any person... to emancipate and set free his or her slaves.... provided always, that all slaves so set free, not being in the judgment of the Court of sound mind and body, or being above the age of forty-five years, or being males under the age of twenty-one, or females under the age of eighteen years, shall respectively be supported and maintained by the person so liberating them, or by his or her estate...."⁽⁵⁴⁾ Compare this law to the cold indifference in the North, especially in Massachusetts, where slaveowners in the Eighteenth Century "manumitted aged or infirm slaves to relieve the master from the charge of supporting them."⁽⁵⁵⁾
         The above descriptions of plantation life in the South cannot be easily discounted, especially when they have been corroborated by the participants themselves. In the late 1930s, the Works Project Administration of the U.S. Government collected the testimonies of former slaves throughout the South which are preserved in the Slave Narratives in the National Archives of Washington, D.C. The vast majority of those interviewed had fond memories of their masters and mistresses on Southern plantations. For example, Tom Douglas, a former slave of Alabama, stated, "Slavery times wuz sho good times. We wuz fed an' clothed an' had nothin' to worry about."⁽⁵⁶⁾ Simon Phillips of Alabama said, "People has the wrong idea of slave days. We was treated good. My massa never laid a hand on me the whole time I was wid him.... Sometime we loaned the massa money when he was hard pushed."⁽⁵⁷⁾ Gus Brown of Richmond, Virginia remembered his former master back in Alabama with these words: "I cannot forget old massa. He was good and kind. He never believed in slavery, but his money was tied up in slaves and he didn't want to lose all he had. I knows I will see him in heaven and even though I have to walk ten miles for a bite of bread, I can still be happy to think about the good times we had then."⁽⁵⁸⁾ Exhibiting a profound sadness about the results of the forced "emancipation" brought about by the North, Mary Rice, of Alabama said, "I was happy all de time in slavery days, but dere ain't much to git happy over now."⁽⁵⁹⁾ James Gill of Arkansas likewise testified, "...[A]ll dem good times ceasted atter a while when de War come and de Yankees started all dere debbilment. Us was Confederates all de while."⁽⁶⁰⁾ It is not surprising, in light of these and a multitude of similar testimonies, that following their compilation nearly seventy years ago, the Slave Narratives were immediately suppressed and hidden from the public.
         While it is true that free Blacks were excluded from citizenship in the South -- as they were throughout the Union -- they nevertheless were viewed as valuable members of Southern society and, with few exceptions, were treated as such. As historian James G. Randall noted:

There was... such a vast difference between the laws on paper and the system that existed in reality that it would be unhistorical to judge the slave regime in the South by this or that severe law which might be found by digging up old codes. The laws, especially where they were most drastic, were not strictly applied. Slaves were, in fact, taught to read and write; they did go abroad in a manner forbidden by statute; they did congregate despite laws forbidding their assembling. Members of the legislatures satisfied their sense of social duty by passing severe laws; and the people paid as much or as little attention to the laws as they saw fit.... It could not be said that either the laws themselves or the actual practices of the institution were primarily motivated by any intention to treat the Negroes harshly.⁽⁶¹⁾

The fact that a great many slaveholders were conscientious in the treatment of their slaves proves that abuse and neglect were not inherent characteristics of the antebellum relationship between master and slave, and that racial animosity was not the foundation of the institution. In fact, according to the 1860 census, there were 250,000 free Blacks in the South,⁽⁶²⁾ many of whom owned slaves of their own. For example, in 1860, the number of Black slaveholders in the State of South Carolina alone was 171, holding property in 766 slaves.⁽⁶³⁾ Nearly one-half of those classified as "colored taxpayers" in Charleston owned between them a total of 390 slaves,⁽⁶⁴⁾ and at the end of the war, 241 slaves in that city were released from service to their Black masters.⁽⁶⁵⁾ It is true that some of the slaves purchased and held by these Negro masters were "their own kindred, bought and held merely because the laws forbade manumission without exile."⁽⁶⁶⁾ Nevertheless, others had an economic, not merely a personal, interest in the institution. According to Larry Koger, "...[M]any black masters did not intend to manumit their slaves and viewed the institution of slavery as a source of labor to be exploited for their own benefit. Indeed, free blacks not only used the labor of slaves to till the soil of their farms and plantations but also purchased slaves to work in their businesses as skilled and unskilled laborers.... [T]he system of American slavery was a universal institution in which even Afro-Americans became slaveowners and occasionally ascended to the ranks of large slaveowning planters."⁽⁶⁷⁾
         Modern history revisionism notwithstanding, the evidence is overwhelming that the old South was the true friend of the Black man and that the rampant inhumanity so often associated with Southern culture is largely a myth. Furthermore, the institution of slavery was rapidly dying out in the upper South, and would not likely have survived in the deep South longer than another generation. Had the interference of the Northern Abolitionists not threatened the fabric of Southern society, the voices of the extreme pro-slavery apologists⁽⁶⁸⁾ would never have had a very large audience⁽⁶⁹⁾ and the racial tensions which arose following the war would probably not have developed:

The South has been vilified for not educating the negro in the days of slavery.
         The South was giving the negro the best possible education — that education that fitted him for the workshop, the field, the church, the kitchen, the nursery, the home. This was an education that taught the negro self-control, obedience and perseverance — yes, taught him to realize his weaknesses and how to grow stronger for the battle of life. The institution of slavery as it was in the South, so far from degrading the negro, was fast elevating him above his nature and his race....
         The black man ought to thank the institution of slavery — the easiest road that any slave people have ever passed from savagery to civilization with the kindest and most humane masters. Hundreds of thousands of the slaves in 1865 were professing Christians and many were partaking of the communion in the church of their masters.⁽⁷⁰⁾

To say that the prevailing attitude towards the Black man was not as positive in the North as in the South would be a gross understatement. In 1838, Alexis de Tocqueville of Great Britain wrote of his tour of both North and South in his book Democracy in America and described race relations in this country as follows: "Prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the States that have abolished slavery, than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known.... [The Southern people are] much more tolerant and compassionate."⁽⁷¹⁾ According to another British writer, free Negroes were "treated like lepers" in the North.⁽⁷²⁾ The biographers of William Lloyd Garrison noted, "The free colored people were looked upon as an inferior caste to whom their liberty was a curse, and their lot worse than that of the slaves...." Throughout the North, there was a spirit which "either by statute or custom, denied to a dark skin, civil, social and educational equality...."⁽⁷³⁾
         In addition to the restriction of suffrage and the holding of public office to White males only, which was common to nearly all of the States, several of the Northern States went much further than those in the South to enact laws regulating and even prohibiting the immigration of Blacks and Mulattoes within their borders. In drafting a constitution in preparation to admission to the Union, the Ohio Convention, composed mainly of New Englanders, determined that "people of color" were not to be considered as parties and therefore should have no part in the administration of the new State government.⁽⁷⁴⁾ In 1804, the State legislature passed a law that required Blacks to produce certificates of their freedom from a Court of Record and execute bonds not to become charges upon the counties in which they settled.⁽⁷⁵⁾ The Ohio supreme court went so far as to declare in 1831 that "color alone is sufficient to indicate a negro's inability to testify against a white man."⁽⁷⁶⁾ In another case, the same court declared:

It has always been admitted, that our political institutions embrace the white population only. Persons of color were not recognized as having any political existence. They had no agency in our political organizations, and possessed no political rights under it. Two or three of the States form exceptions. The constitutions of fourteen expressly exclude persons of color by a provision similar to our own; and, in the balance of the States, they are excluded on the ground that they were never recognized as a part of the body politic.... Indeed, it is a matter of history, that the very object of introducing the word white into our constitution, by the convention framing that instrument, was to put this question beyond all cavil or doubt, by, in express terms, excluding all persons from the enjoyment of the elective franchise, except persons of pure white blood.
         ...Hence, we find, so early as 1804, followed up by another act in 1807, statutes discouraging the emigration of blacks into our State, and imposing upon those among us such conditions and restrictions as would induce the vast majority of them to quit the State. Thus, we have denied them all constitutional right to remain even in the State....
         This exclusion of persons of color, or, of any degree of colored blood, from all political rights, is not founded upon a mere naked prejudice, but upon natural differences. The two races are placed as wide apart by the hand of nature as white from black, and, to break down the barriers, fixed, as it were, by the Creator himself, in a political and social amalgamation, shocks us, as something unnatural and wrong. It strikes us as a violation of the laws of nature. It would be productive of no good. It would degrade the white, if it could be accomplished, without elevating the black. Indeed, if we gather lessons of wisdom from the history of mankind -- walk by the light of our experience, or consult the principles of human nature, we shall be convinced that the two races never can live together upon terms of equality and harmony (emphasis in original).⁽⁷⁷⁾

On 10 February 1831, the legislature of Indiana enacted a very similar restriction as existed in Ohio, but with the adoption of its 1851 constitution, Blacks and Mulattoes were entirely prohibited entry or settlement into the State.⁽⁷⁸⁾ This prohibition was inserted with the approval of a ninety thousand majority of the popular vote.⁽⁷⁹⁾
         Anti-Negro legislation began in Illinois only one year after the State was organized and admitted to the Union. On 30 March 1819, an act went into effect which stated that "no black or mulatto person shall be permitted to settle or reside in this State, unless he or she shall first produce a certificate signed by some judge or some clerk of some court of the United States, of his or her actual freedom." All free Blacks were required by this law to register themselves together with the evidence of their freedom in the county where they intended to reside, and it also prohibited the employment of any Black or Mulatto who had not been so registered. Furthermore, this act prescribed "lashes on his or her bare back" for slaves found "ten miles from the tenement of his or her master" (a maximum of thirty-five lashes), "being on the plantation or in the tenement of another than the master, not being sent on lawful business" (ten lashes), and for the gathering of three or more slaves "for the purpose of dancing or reveling either by day or night" (thirty-nine lashes).⁽⁸⁰⁾ On 17 January 1829, this act was supplemented by another which declared that any Blacks or Mulattoes found within the State without the necessary registration papers were to be "deemed runaway slaves," arrested by the Sheriff, and if not claimed, were to be sold "for the best price he can get."⁽⁸¹⁾ Not satisfied with these laws, the Illinois legislature passed yet another act "to prevent the immigration of free negroes into this state" and added that any Black person found in violation of this law should be fined and sold into temporary servitude to pay the fine and cost of prosecution.⁽⁸²⁾ Thus, as one writer put it, Negroes "seeking homes on the prairies... were put upon the block."⁽⁸³⁾ The provisions of this statute were finally added to the State constitution in 1862 with these words: "No negro or mulatto shall immigrate or settle in this state after the adoption of the constitution."⁽⁸⁴⁾ In 1843, the supreme court of Illinois declared that the purpose of these laws was "to prevent the influx of that most unacceptable population."⁽⁸⁵⁾ There is no record that Lincoln ever objected to any of these anti-Negro laws which were passed by his own State, and his own public statements on the subject indicated his support of them.
         The following provision was written into the 1857 constitution for Oregon:

No free negro or mulatto not residing in this State at the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from this State, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the State, or employ or harbor them.⁽⁸⁶⁾

On 9 December 1857, Governor George L. Curry certified that 8,641 Citizens of Oregon had voted in favor of this constitution, with only 1,081 opposing it.⁽⁸⁷⁾
         In 1835, a free Black man sued for the right to vote in Pennsylvania. The State supreme court replied:

...[A] free negro or mulatto is not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution and laws of the United States, and of the State of Pennsylvania, and, therefore, is not entitled to the right of suffrage.... But in addition to interpretation from usage, this antecedent legislation declared that no colored race was party to our social compact. Our ancestors settled the province as a community of white men; and the blacks were introduced into it as a race of slaves; whence an unconquerable prejudice of caste, which has come down to our day.... Consistently with this prejudice, is it to be credited that parity of rank would be allowed to such a race?... I have thought fair to treat the question as it stands affected by our own municipal regulations without illustration from those of other States, where the condition of the race has been still less favored. Yet it is proper to say that the second section of the fourth article of the Federal Constitution, presents an obstacle to the political freedom of the negro, which seems to be insuperable.⁽⁸⁸⁾

Even in the New England States, where Abolitionist ideals were most prevalent, Negroes were not found to be treated equally with Whites. As late as 1802, the following law was in force in Massachusetts:

That no person, being an African or negro, other than a subject of the Emperor of Morocco, or a citizen of the United States [sic], to be evidenced by a certificate, &c., shall tarry within this commonwealth for a longer time than two months; if he does, the justices have power to order such person to depart, &c., and if such person shall not depart within ten days, &c., such person shall be committed to the prison or house of correction. And for this offense, &c., he shall be whipped, &c., and ordered again to depart in ten days; and if he does not, the same process and punishment to be inflicted, and so toties quoties.⁽⁸⁹⁾

Intermarriage between Blacks and Whites was also prohibited by law in both Massachusetts and Maine as late as 1835.⁽⁹⁰⁾
         While Blacks were not excluded from Connecticut, the legislature nevertheless enacted a law in 1833 which forbade the establishment within the State of any "school, academy, or literary institution, for the instruction or education of colored persons, who are not inhabitants of this State." This was done because it was feared that making education available to non-resident Negroes would lead "to the great increase of the colored population of the State, and thereby to the injury of the people."⁽⁹¹⁾ In October of that same year, the constitutionality of this law was brought before the Connecticut supreme court for review. Responding to the assertion of the defendant in this case that the law violated Article IV, Section 2 of the United States Constitution -- the "Comity Clause" which guaranteed that the rights of a State Citizen would be protected throughout the Union -- Chief Justice David Daggett wrote an opinion which was nearly identical to what Taney would deliver over thirty years later:

The persons contemplated in this act are not citizens within the obvious meaning of that section of the Constitution of the United States which I have just read. Let me begin by putting this plain question: Are slaves citizens? At the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, every State was a slave State.... We all know that slavery is recognized in that Constitution; it is the duty of this court to take that Constitution as it is, for we have sworn to support it.... Then slaves were not considered citizens by the framers of the Constitution....
         Are free blacks citizens?... To my mind it would be a perversion of terms, and the well known rules of construction, to say that slaves, free blacks, or Indians were citizens, within the meaning of that term as used in the Constitution. God forbid that I should add to the degradation of this race of men; but I am bound, by my duty, to say that they are not citizens (emphasis in original).⁽⁹²⁾

Finally, when drafting and ratifying a constitution in 1859, the people of Kansas — most of whom were Abolitionist immigrants from the New England States — they both excluded free Blacks from citizenship and forbade their settlement in the State.⁽⁹³⁾ The provision in the Kansas constitution which denied citizenship to the Negro was ratified by an overwhelming majority vote of 2,223 to 453.⁽⁹⁴⁾ Thus we see that "free soil" in the North really meant "free from Negroes." This is why the so-called "Underground Railroad" ended, not in the Northern States of the Union, but in Canada. Even the majority of Northern Abolitionists did not advocate the social and political equality of Blacks within their own States; they agitated for thirty years for the destruction of slavery, but what to do with four million freedmen they considered to be a Southern problem. In fact, so great was the apprehension in the North during the war of the possibility of a massive immigration of Blacks as a result of emancipation in the South that Lincoln was compelled to reassure the Northern Congressmen with the following address:

But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and cover the whole land. Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the one in any way disturb the seven?...
         But why should emancipation South send the free people North? People of any color seldom run unless there be something to run from. Heretofore colored people to some extent have fled North from bondage and now perhaps from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted they will have neither to flee from.... And in any event cannot the North decide for itself whether to receive them?⁽⁹⁵⁾

It is beyond reasonable dispute that Stephen Douglas was merely stating an historical fact when he declared in 1858 that "this Government was established on the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and never should be administered by any except white men."⁽⁹⁶⁾ Whether this was just or unjust is irrelevant to the point at hand: the system of government thus established could only be changed or abolished by those who framed it or by their posterity, to whom alone they bequeathed the authority to do so. This has never been done and over a century of propaganda has not changed that fact, no matter how many millions of Americans have been led to believe otherwise.

1. George Lunt, The Origin of the Late War (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1866), pages x-xi.

2. David Wilmot, quoted in Richard H. Sewell, Ballots For Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), page 173).

3. William Seward, speech delivered in the Senate on 11 March 1850; Congressional Globe (Thirty-First Congress, First Session), Appendix, page 261.

4. Seward, speech delivered at Rochester, New York on 25 October 1858; in George Baker (editor), The Works of William Seward (four volumes; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1884), Volume IV, page 302.

5. William H. Seward, speech delivered at Detroit, Michigan on 4 September 1860; quoted by William P. Pickett, The Negro Problem: Abraham Lincoln's Solution (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1909), page 449.

6. Benjamin Wade, speech delivered in the Senate on 17 December 1860; Congressional Globe (Thirty-Sixth Congress, Second Session), page 104.

7. Roy P. Basler (editor), Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings (New York: Da Capo Press, 1946), page 23.

8. Lincoln, quoted by David Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), page 94.

9. Robert W. Johannsen, Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), page 14.

10. Lincoln, speech delivered in 1832; quoted in Osborn H. Oldroyd, The Lincoln Memorial (New York: American Union Publishing Company, 1882), Volume I, page 102.

11. Lincoln, letter to Edward Wallace dated 11 October 1859; in John G. Nicolay and John Hay (editors), Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works Comprising His Speeches, Letters, State Papers and Miscellaneous Writings (New York: The Century Company, 1902), Volume V, pages 256-257.

12. I.F. Boughter, essay: "Western Pennsylvania and the Morrill Tariff," Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine (April, 1923), Volume VI, page 128.

13. Reference: Reinhard H. Luthin, essay: "Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff," The American Historical Review (July, 1944), Volume XLIX, Number 4, page 619.

14. Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, quoted by Luthin, "Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff," page 624.

15. William Bigler, quoted in Philadelphia Public Ledger, 12 December 1860.

16. Johannsen, Lincoln, the South, and Slavery, page 45.

17. Douglas, speech delivered at Chicago, Illinois on 9 July 1858; in Johannsen, Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pages 29, 30-31.

18. Douglas, speech delivered at Springfield, Illinois on 17 July 1858; quoted by Johannsen, Lincoln and the South, page 92. Lincoln was not present on this occasion, so this speech is not technically classified as part of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

19. Reference: The Kentucky Resolutions, 10 November 1798.

20. Reference: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Liberty Fund, [1776], 1981).

21. Lincoln, reply to Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois on 21 August 1858; in Johannsen, Lincoln-Douglas Debates, page 52.

22. Lincoln, reply to Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois on 15 September 1858; in Johannsen, ibid., pages 131, 132.

23. Lincoln, reply to Douglas on 15 October 1858; in Johannsen, ibid., page 316.

24. Lincoln, address at Springfield, Illinois on 26 June 1857; in Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, Volume I, page 235.

25. Lincoln, reply to Douglas at Peoria, Illinois on 16 October 1858; quoted by Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, Volume I, page 186.

26. Lincoln, speech delivered at Charleston, Illinois on 18 September 1858; in Johannsen, Lincoln-Douglas Debates, page 162.

27. Lincoln, reply to Douglas on 18 September 1858, in Johannsen, ibid., pages 197, 198.

28. Lincoln, speech delivered at the Executive Mansion on 14 August 1862; in Henry J. Raymond, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln Together With His State Papers (New York: Derby and Miller, 1865), page 504.

29. Lincoln, address delivered at Washington, D.C.; in Basler, ibid., Volume V, pages 371-375.

30. Lincoln, quoted by Butler, Butler's Book, page 903.

31. Charles Sumner, quoted by C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1960), page 87.

32. William Tecumseh Sherman, letter dated July, 1860; quoted by W.A. DeWolfe Howe, "General Sherman's Letters Home," Scribner's Magazine, April 1909, page 400.

33. Pelham Papers, quoted by Carey, Olive Branch, page 255.

34. Richard Hildreth, Despotism in America: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Results of the Slave-Holding System in the United States (Boston, Massachusetts: Anti-Slavery Society, 1840), pages 45, 71.

35. Henry Cabot Lodge, quoted by Mildred Lewis Rutherford, Truths of History (Athens, Georgia: self-published, 1920), pages 105, 107.

36. Davis, Brother Against Brother, pages 48-49.

37. Reference: Davis, ibid., page 57. Apparently, the publishers perceived the problem this particular picture created for the author's narrative, for they inserted the following caption: "Although many planters sponsored festivities at Christmas time, few of their slaves were as well dressed as these." Again, the reader is expected to accept this claim at face value with no supporting evidence.

38. Reference: Davis, ibid., page 56.

39. Reference: The Civil War: A House Divided Cannot Stand (Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin: Home Library Publishing Company, 1976); William C. Davis and Bell I. Wiley (editors), Photographic History of the Civil War: Fort Sumter to Gettysburg (New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 1994).

40. John Belton O'Neall, quoted by McHenry, Cotton Trade, page 252.

41. Georgia statute of 1815, quoted by McHenry, ibid., pages 253-254.

42. Louisiana statute, quoted by McHenry, ibid., page 254.

43. Constitution of the State of Texas (1845), Article VIII.

44. Reference: Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, pages 55-56. A healthy female sold for an average of $1,325 and slaves of "unusual value" sometimes sold for as high as $2,500.

45. Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 5.

46. Charles L.C. Minor, The Real Lincoln (Richmond, Virginia: Everett Waddey Company, [1904] 1928), pages 194-195 (footnote).

47. Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 182.

48. Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), page 323.

49. James S. Buckingham, The Slave States of America (London: Fisher, Son and Company, 1841), Volume II, page 112.

50. Major-General John Quitman, quoted by Taliaferro P. Shaffner, The Secession War in America (London: Hamilton, Adams and Company, 1862).

51. Adams stated that in some parts of the old South, the number of Black communicants was as high as four times greater than that of the White communicants. In Virginia in 1856, the total number of Black communicants in the Baptist churches was forty-five thousand; in Savannah, Georgia, a full one-third of the Black population were church members; in South Carolina, Negroes comprised an astounding one-third of the total number of church communicants in the State (reference: Southside View of Slavery, pages 53-54). Adams noted, "Religion has gained wonderful ascendency among this people.... I never perceived in their prayers any thing that reminded me of their condition as slaves. They made no allusions to sorrows but those which are spiritual, and they chiefly dwelt upon their temptations. But the love of Christ and heaven were the all-inspiring themes of their prayers and hymns" (ibid., page 55). If nothing else, the introduction of hundreds of thousands of Negro slaves to the eternally liberating Gospel of Christ was certainly one of the merits of the institution of slavery in the antebellum South.

52. Adams, ibid., pages 47-48.

53. Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, page 114.

54. A Collection of All Such Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia of a Public and Permanent Nature as are Now in Force (Richmond, Virginia: Samuel Pleasants, Jr., 1803), page 200.

55. Spears, American Slave Trade, page 92.

56. Tom Douglas, quoted in Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews With Former Slaves (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934), Volume I (The Alabama Narratives), pages 218-219.

57. Simon Phillips, quoted in ibid., pages 312, 315.

58. Gus Brown, quoted in ibid., pages 224-226.

59. Mary Rice, quoted in ibid., pages 329-330.

60. James Gill, quoted in ibid., Volume III, page 19.

61. Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, pages 47, 48.

62. Reference: Randall, ibid., page 50.

63. Reference: Larry Koger, Black Slaveowners in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1985), page 18.

64. Reference: Ulrich B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1918), page 434.

65. Reference: Koger, Black Slaveowners, page 18.

66. Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), page 71 (footnote).

67. Koger, Black Slaveowners, page 2.

68. Reference: William Sumner Jenkins, Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1960).

69. On 10 January 1838, John C. Calhoun credited five years of Abolitionist agitation for the shift in Southern thought on the subject of slavery from a general indifference and even hostility toward the institution to one which defended it as a positive good: "This agitation has produced one happy effect at least; it has compelled us in the South to look into the nature and character of this great institution, and to correct many false impressions that even we had entertained in relation to it. Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world" (Congressional Globe [Twenty-Fifth Congress, Second Session], pages 61-62).

70. Rutherford, Truths of History, page 18.

71. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (London: George Allard, 1838), page 338.

72. James Spence, article: "The American Republic: Resurrection Through Dissolution," Northern British Review, February 1862, page 240.

73. Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, Volume I, pages 253-254.

74. Reference: Jacob Burnet, Notes on the Early Settlement of the North-Western Territory (Cincinnati, Ohio: Derby, Bradley and Company, 1847), page 355.

75. Reference: George W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1885), Volume II, pages 111-119; Ewing, Dred Scott Decision, page 63.

76. Calvin v. Carter (1831), 4 Hammonds' Oregon Reports 351.

77. Thacher v. Hawk (1842), 11 Stanton's Ohio Reports 384-385. Ironically, Edwin M. Stanton, who would later serve as Secretary of War under Lincoln and would advocate the emancipation of the Southern slaves, was the court reporter at this time.

78. Reference: Williams, Negro Race in America, Volume II, pages 119-122; McHenry, Cotton Trade, page 247.

79. Reference: Wilson, Slave Power in America, Volume II, page 185.

80. Illinois statute of 30 March 1819, quoted by Ewing, Dred Scott Decision, pages 79-80.

81. Illinois statute of 17 January 1829, quoted by Ewing, ibid., page 80.

82. Reference: Williams, Negro Race in America, page 123.

83. Arthur Charles Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict: 1850-1865 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1934), page 264.

84. Constitution of Illinois (1862), Article XVIII, Section 1. This amendment was approved by a majority of 100,590 voters (reference: Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois [Springfield, Illinois: C.H. Lanphier, 1862], page 1098).

85. Eells v. The People (1843), 4 Scammon 513.

86. Constitution of Oregon (1857), Article I, Section 35.

87. Reference: General Laws of Oregon, 1845-1864; cited by Ewing, Dred Scott Decision, page 66.

88. Hobbs v. Fogg (1835), 6 Watts, 553, 554.

89. Massachusetts statute of 1802, quoted by McHenry, Cotton Trade, page 244.

90. Reference: McHenry, ibid.

91. Connecticut statute of 1833, quoted by Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, Volume I, page 321.

92. Crandall v. The State (1833), 10 Connecticut Reports, 339, 340, 345, 347.

93. Reference: Dr. H. Von Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States (Chicago, Illinois: Callahan and Company, 1889), Volume V, page 168.

94. Reference: Ewing, Dred Scott Decision, page 66.

95. Lincoln, 1 December 1862 message to Congress; in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume VIII, pages 3341-3342.

96. Stephen A. Douglas, response to Lincoln at Charleston, Illinois on 18 September 1858; in Johannsen, Lincoln-Douglas Debates, page 196.

This article was extracted from Greg Loren Durand, America's Caesar: The Decline and Fall of Republican Government in the United States of America (Dahlonega, Georgia: Institute for Southern Historical Review, 2005).