_It is the war which kills slavery, and not the
man who leads the war_.
'_The other destroying agency in open discussion_. Slavery can live
only in silence. There is a deadly antagonism between itself and
free speech. Where the one exists the other cannot. The vitality of
the one rests in pure force, and force and reason never agree. It
always has been, and always will be, that force must either
suppress reason or reason will subvert force. One of the first acts
of the slavery propagandists in Kansas was to pass enactments
through their spurious Legislature, making it a felony, punishable
by imprisonment and hard labor, for any man to 'assert or maintain
by speaking or writing that persons have not the right to hold
slaves in this Territory.' It has been so in every Slave State, and
worse. _Not only have slave codes interdicted, in every one of
them, all adverse discussion of the institution, but a mob power
has always been at hand to take summary vengeance upon it with
Lynch law. These resorts were not a mere caprice; they were a
necessity_. Slavery being once accepted as the prime object, there
was no alternative but to protect it just in this manner. _But the
war has ended all that. There can be no mobs where the bayonet
governs; nor arbitrary local laws where general military law is
paramount.
Pages:
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149