2. That free labor, its necessary consequence, is more productive, and
more advantageous to the planter than slave labor.
In proof of the first proposition it is only necessary to state the
undeniable fact that immediate emancipation, whether by an individual or
a community, has in no instance been attended with violence and disorder
on the part of the emancipated; but that on the contrary it has promoted
cheerfulness, industry, and laudable ambition in the place of sullen
discontent, indolence, and despair.
The case of St. Domingo is in point. Blood was indeed shed on that
island like water, but it was not in consequence of emancipation. It was
shed in the civil war which preceded it, and in the iniquitous attempt to
restore the slave system in 1801. It flowed on the sanguine altar of
slavery, not on the pure and peaceful one of emancipation. No; there, as
in all the world and in all time, the violence of oppression engendered
violence on the part of the oppressed, and vengeance followed only upon
the iron footsteps of wrong. When, where, did justice to the injured
waken their hate and vengeance? When, where, did love and kindness and
sympathy irritate and madden the persecuted, the broken-hearted, the
foully wronged?
In September, 1793, the Commissioner of the French National Convention
issued his proclamation giving immediate freedom to all the slaves of St.
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